The madness of the billion dollar Toyota Corolla Ferry blowout
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.
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.
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