Ferry report does not solve the big problem

The Mar­itime Union has sound­ed a note of cau­tion about the sea­wor­thi­ness of Inter­is­lander fer­ries.
KiwiRail has today released a sum­ma­ry of a mar­itime assess­ment of the three Inter­is­lander fer­ries car­ried out by DNV, which says the ships are in rea­son­able con­di­tion.
Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Carl Find­lay says the Union appre­ci­ates the efforts being made by KiwiRail, but mem­bers on the fer­ries had real con­cerns about health and safe­ty.
“Our mem­bers crew those fer­ries, so if some­thing does go wrong they are placed in dan­ger.”
Mr Find­lay says the Union is treat­ing the con­clu­sions of the DNV report with cau­tion.
He says keep­ing the cur­rent ves­sels run­ning until the end of the decade is a stop gap mea­sure at best.
“There have been a num­ber of tech­ni­cal issues with the fer­ries already, some with poten­tial­ly very seri­ous out­comes, and the fact remains that there are many age­ing sys­tems and com­po­nents in ser­vice on the fer­ries.”
Mr Find­lay says that KiwiRail has been put in an impos­si­ble posi­tion.
“KiwiRail doesn’t real­ly have any choice but to sol­dier on with end of life ves­sels and push up main­te­nance costs and main­te­nance time for the ships.”
He says the main prob­lem remains – there is no clear indi­ca­tion yet what the Gov­ern­ment has planned in place of the iRex project it dumped last year.
Mr Find­lay says the full cost of aban­don­ing the iRex project is yet to be deter­mined and would pos­si­bly wipe out any sav­ings on new fer­ries and ter­mi­nal infra­struc­ture.