Concerns about ongoing Cook Strait ferry issues

The Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and says the Cook Strait ferry ser­vice is strug­gling, with the entire Inter­is­lander fleet cur­rently either suf­fer­ing break­downs, wave dam­age or being taken out of ser­vice for audit.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Carl Find­lay says the vital trans­port link is hanging by a thread, with ongo­ing dis­rup­tion.

He says the Aratere has once again exper­i­enced tech­nic­al issues, fol­low­ing engine shaft prob­lems in Pic­ton on Wed­nes­day even­ing that caused sev­er­al hours of delays. Crew mem­bers and pas­sen­gers had to remain on board before being able to dis­em­bark in Wel­ling­ton.

Over the pre­vi­ous week­end, Kai­arahi had its bow door dam­aged in rough seas, which will be wel­ded shut to allow it to con­tin­ue to oper­ate until a sched­uled dry dock in Singa­pore in July.

Kaitaki is being pulled from ser­vice this week­end for a Mari­time NZ audit.

KiwiRail announced in May 2025 it would remove the rail-enabled Aratere ferry from ser­vice in August 2025, and is now seek­ing to cut 70 jobs for MUNZ mem­bers in the deck and cater­ing depart­ments on the Aratere.

Mr Find­lay says the Uni­on had flagged the dangers of remov­ing a key ves­sel from ser­vice, and the cur­rent situ­ation showed that KiwiRail needed to rethink their plan.

He says tech­nic­al prob­lems with Cook Strait fer­ries exten­ded to the private oper­at­or Strait Ship­ping, and had their roots in a fail­ure to invest in mod­ern ship­ping and infra­struc­ture by the Gov­ern­ment and private oper­at­ors.

Mr Find­lay says the can­cel­la­tion of the iRex pro­ject by Fin­ance Min­is­ter Nic­ola Wil­lis was going to cause years of dis­rup­tion as the iRex fer­ries would have been enter­ing into ser­vice over the next year or two.

New fer­ries announced by Min­is­ter of Rail Win­ston Peters are now not expec­ted until at least 2029.