Ferry fiasco hangs over PM’s South Korea trip

Sort­ing out the mess his Finance Min­is­ter has made of the inter­is­land fer­ries deal should be the key out­come of the Prime Minister’s vis­it to South Korea, says the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ).

The can­cel­la­tion of the deal, which has been under nego­ti­a­tion for eight months now, is expect­ed to cost the tax­pay­er up to a half a bil­lion dol­lars – a cost that comes on top of anoth­er half a bil­lion dol­lars of sunk costs in the project.

MUNZ Nation­al Sec­re­tary Carl Find­lay says the cur­rent state of lim­bo cre­at­ed by this fail­ure is unac­cept­able. “It is astound­ing that more than a half a year after the Finance Min­is­ter can­celled this vital project there has been no res­o­lu­tion.

“It is bad enough that the gov­ern­ment clear­ly had no plan B for the only rail-freight ser­vice we have on Cook Strait — the fact that we are still wait­ing for final can­cel­la­tion or rene­go­ti­a­tion of this deal is mad­ness.

“Nico­la Willis’ fer­ry fias­co isn’t just cost­ing us mon­ey, it has put the kibosh on the biggest eco­nom­ic deal between South Korea and New Zealand in years, and risks sour­ing rela­tions between our coun­tries. 

Prime Min­is­ter Lux­on needs to use his much-vaunt­ed inter­na­tion­al busi­ness expe­ri­ence to sit down with the South Kore­ans and find a way through this expen­sive fias­co as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We have to get on with replac­ing the fer­ries we have. At best Kiwirail will be able to eke out anoth­er five years of ser­vice from them; it can take longer than that to design and build new ships. If the gov­ern­ment doesn’t set­tle this can­cel­la­tion soon, or rene­go­ti­ate to get Hyundai to build new fer­ries, we will run out of time.

“That’s a huge and urgent threat to freight cus­tomers, our econ­o­my, and our inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

“No mat­ter what hap­pens, the reck­less deci­sion to can­cel the build con­tract, just days before the steel was to be cut for the hulls, has put New Zealand in a ter­ri­ble posi­tion.

“We need the Prime Min­is­ter to call time on the sit­u­a­tion, front up on the cost his gov­ern­ment has put on us and work to get a con­tract struck for pub­licly owned, rail-enabled fer­ries imme­di­ate­ly. 

The fool­ish deci­sion to can­cel a project that was more than six years in the mak­ing has cost us too much already.”

MUNZ is New Zealand’s largest Mar­itime union and is affil­i­at­ed with more than 200 mar­itime unions inter­na­tion­al­ly.