As TDB has been pointing out since the beginning, the Government’s knee jerk virtue signal to dump the IRex Ferries in favour of a smaller cheaper ‘Toyota Corolla’ will push the cost beyond a billion…
Finance Minister needs to explain ferry decision cost to taxpayer – Maritime Union of New Zealand
The Maritime Union of New Zealand says the cancellation cost for the iRex ship build is likely to come in at more than NZ $300 million, and could run up to a maximum cost approaching a half a billion dollars (NZD) at current rates.
This would be on top of around a half a billion NZD in sunk cost on the cancelled iRex project – figures the Maritime Union has been advised on after consulting with the maritime industry here and offshore.
Maritime Union of New Zealand National Secretary Carl Findlay says the Finance Minister needs to explain how this happened and why she should keep her job.
“This single decision is likely to have torched a billion dollars of taxpayer’s money with nothing to show for it. It’s fiscal arson.”
Mr Findlay says on top of this cost, New Zealand still needs to buy new ferries.
…let’s get this completely straight.
KiwiRail negotiates a sweetheart deal for 2 Rail capable Ferries for $550m at a time when boat builders were desperate for work.
It was a sweetheart deal because it gave us an upgrade to Rail that would be crucial to lower our emissions targets and to build capacity into the Cook Strait for more economic growth.
The cost ‘blowout’ was the necessary and predictable upgrade to the Ports. Labour should get a kick in the arse over how this managed to be a surprise to everyone, but the cost to upgrade the Ports was always going to be a necessity.
National get in and immediately kill the deal by rat-fucking KiwiRail so their Trucking Industry Interests are protected.
Nicola Willis wanted the virtue signal of killing the deal off without seeming to bother working out what to do next. It was more important to her to look like she was slashing Labour’s spending without working out the true cost of that.
She claimed to want a Toyota Corolla instead of a Tesla.
Well it looks like the cost of that Toyota Corolla will now be over $1billion!
National dumped the Ferry deal to virtue signal while ratfucking KiwiRail for the Trucking industry.
AND NOW after fucking this over so badly for bullshit virtue signal points, National are eyeing up privatising the whole thing after being the ones who destroyed it…
Government refuses to rule out privatising KiwiRail amid revelations contractor spend tops $8m
The Prime Minister’s refusing to rule out privatising the embattled KiwiRail or carving off Interislander.
It comes after revelations of eye-watering contractor spending by the state-owned enterprise which Newshub understands topped $8 million.
…this isn’t Governance, it’s spite!
Look I’m as pissed off as the next Labour supporter that the bloody bike lane over the harbour bridge that never got built cost us $150m, but sweet zombie Jesus, Labour shouldn’t be lectured on economic mismanagement again by a Government that have blown a billion on a Toyota Corolla!
The elephant in the room is she will need to buy 3 corollas to replace the existing fleet .Cant replace 3 small ships with 2 smaller ones can you .Its not rocket science to be able to see that is it .
No thought was given to her original action to can a progressive deal just to appeal to her masters and to look like she was smart and tough .She then wasted twice the required amount to give property investors a tax cut
I think most sane hardworking Kiwis now realise that with regard to Wills’s intellectual firepower…there’s room for dancing upstairs.
She performed badly and was out of her depth in the Queenstown finance leader’s debate pre- election, demonstrating that she had little to
no understanding of how to run the
finances of a country…why would she??…
She has no business being
the Minister of Finance and it once again shows how useless Clusterfuxon was/ is as a leader by
making the disastrous decision to
appoint her in the first place.
Terrible judgement…no nouse
you have Clusterfuxon
See how easy it was for Hitler to get to a position of power. Godwin will be turning in his grave over the next few years.
The “$1Billion” is merely a reckon by the Maritime Union. I wouldn’t rely on it being anywhere near the right number.
no it will be a lot higher than that and the end cost will be over 5 billion nearly double the amount of the original project .Thats if it even gets done .I suspect Willis will just kick the can till she is kicked out at the next election
If the Maritime Union are against it then it’s obviously right.
I’d back the Maritime Union up against Willis against Clusterfuxon any day.
Willis has managed to put herself into check, and checkmate, in one single move, and Clusterfuxon, after looking into the move at being checkmated, has okayed it?????
This is a guy who believes the National Party’s forte is economics?????
This is the guy who left Air N.Z with a spread sheet in red ink tatters .
Clusterfuxon and Willis, with their combined great wisdoms, developed over many years of deep Aristotle inspired thinking, with now pull out their ace card….
That ‘ace card’ will have significant bad consequences for N.Z.
China will get the contract to supply the ships…inferior ships to the Hyundai irex ships, and, the price will be near twice that of the Hyundai deal…..but worse still…China will get also get the construction job to reconfigure and upgrade our ageing wharfs.
To keep the price down for the wharf reconstruction, China will want a ‘slice of the pie’.
It will be yet another adjunct to their worldwide ‘Belt and Road’ initiative that Bill English is in the background salivating over!
Just as China will get National’s contract for their ‘roads of national significance’ wet dream, which, as part of the deal, they will get to toll, so too will they get to toll the wharf used for the ferries….it will be checkmate and self mutilation all rolled into one!!
National…the party with no brain!
If Nicola made the decision it is obviously a f’ing stupid one.
If the Maritime Union are against it then it’s obviously right.
“This morning, 1 News is reporting that the cancellation of the i-Rex ferries has so far cost taxpayers $484 million.
That’s almost half a billion dollars.”,,, “Note, the $484 mn doesn’t capture the full costs.”
Clearly the NActFirsts are shit with money …. “To give you a sense of scale,
National intends to spend $70bn over the next 10 years to build roads, one of which will be the most expensive in the world.
National’s road budget from 2023 blew out by 200-300% almost as soon as they got into Government.
National and ACT secured $2.9 billion for landlord tax cuts before the election.
Simeon Brown allocated $4bn over three years for pothole remediation.”
“She must have know (Nicola Willis)Kiwirail’s board and executive team had secured the future proof boats at a fixed price of 40% less than market price. Hyundai had already built and tested the engines when she wrote a letter directing the contract cancellation.”
“While 1News says $484 million has been flushed down the toilet because of Willis’s decision to cancel without a back up plan, the truth is they haven’t factored in the penalty clause.
Recent reports estimate that to cost upwards of $300mn. Then there is the price tag when we really have to buy the ferries again.”
https://thestandard.org.nz/mountain-tui-the-kiwirail-interislander-saga-continues/
And yet you are happy to hang off every word of Willis. You absolute twat.
Your bitter abuse and wild asumptions win no-one over to the Left.
And your blind support for a lot of the decisions these idiots make gives you zero credibility
That may well be true but one thing is certain. They made much more effort to work out the true cost of cancellation than Nicola did.
I am sceptical about the self-interested union but Martyn has a point. The landing upgrade always needed to be done and find it hard to imagine that National did not know this in opposition. It’s not as if the terminal at Picton was invisible. Willis doesn’t seem to have financial qualifications (she’s no better than Robertson) and is consequently relying on Treasury. Politicians need an entrance qualification for their portfolios.
If National had a problem with the contractor spend, maybe they shouldn’t have pushed KiwiRail to wind down their inhouse engineering staff, until the only people they have doing engineering work are guys who were employed by the New Zealand Railways Corporation who charge rates consistent with their level of experience.
NATZO suppose to be economic fiscally responsible govt????????
This f@ck up could end up with the mothballing of the entire South Island rail network due to lack of rail capable ferries.
Indescribable madness!!!
Winston remains silent, despite saying in Jan 2020 the last time he was in power: “This Government has a bold vision for rail. We said we would address the appalling history of under-investment in our rail system over the last three decades, and we are well on track to achieve that,” Mr Peters said.
Rail is a national strategic asset and strong investment is a no brainer.”
(https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/future-proofing-new-zealand’s-rail)
Another betrayal by Winston, whose legacy will be exactly that: lies.
This insane government has to go a.s.a.p.
Spot on Jase!
Some more thoughtful stuff re the fairies (oops the ferries).
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2408/S00019/on-making-profits-from-the-ferries-fiasco.htm
Gordon Campbell:
…Reportedly, the new government cancelled the original deal because of a “blowout” in the cost of the port handling facilities for the large Hyundai ferries envisaged by Kiwirail. Yet as widely reported, hundreds of millions in sunk costs have already been incurred, and that’s not counting the as-yet unknown costs of breaking the original contract with the South Korean shipyard…
What if the gummint is playing with an idea for coastal shipping that would reduce the need for certain land travel. And cut out some of the port costs at each end of the Cook Strait. The smaller Swedish ferries referred to would handle the passenger and small freight stuff that would travel by road. The large coastal shipping vessels would handle the heavy stuff that causes concern for the reliability of rail and the track, road surface, high fuel costs, and the problem of road washouts and especially erosion in the northern South Island where the coastline track is likely to be derailed by sea and storm damage. And then there is track heat buckling that could come from furnace-like heat bursts FTTT.
This and the new era of drone delivery might be confusing their poor little heads in gummint and those stuck to them for admin and advisory roles, that keep fussing about money when government should be able to access low interest credits for practical business and strategic advantage for the country. But what does it do for our defence partners – will it be useful to them, might be their primary concern? Many of the upper crust are almost off the planet in space and cannot focus their minds on our 5 million people from their vision-perspective way up in the air. Even from 15000 feet one cannot make out individual earth features! Look down. Look down. Les Mis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyqURSNx-KY
(Read Gordon Campbell link down to the very bottom for an egregious comedy turn by Luxon.)
A demonstration of fiscal prudence by Nicola Willis in contrast to the spend,spend with no financial analysis practiced for 6 years by the late Labour Government.
A demonstration of the idiocy of Bob the First who seems unable to register that we still have to buy new ferries and upgrade the port infrastructure that accomodates them. Come on Bob, let us know how much that is going to cost and please factor in the cost of roading damage as trucks replace rail for transporting goods.
You mean borrowing 14 billion to give it away Bob? Winner
Bob, I am no vacuous lefty, but Willis has underperformed on this one.
Any CEO or CFO that loses a $1billion on a deal gets told to fuck off don’t come Monday. Labour need a scalp. Which scalp?
The reason why Willis killed the deal with no plan was exactly because they want privatisation of Kiwirail. Labour was manifestly stupid to allow something like this to happen, so was Kiwirail. That contract should not have been legally able to be stopped once underway. Willis couldn’t care less about the cost, they want privatisation at ALL costs. It was more than virtue signally to stop that deal.
The reason why Willis killed the deal with no plan was exactly because they want privatisation of Kiwirail. Labour was manifestly stupid to allow something like this to happen, so was Kiwirail. That contract should not have been legally able to be stopped once underway. Willis couldn’t care less about the cost, they want privatisation at ALL costs. It was more than virtue signally to stop that deal.
Yep.
Yep
Oh another crash in port by the Aratere .Clearly the ports are not up to scratch hence the reason for the already started up grades .The only problem with those upgrades was the National party doners gouging the tax payer charging 3 x more than needed during said construction