Grant McCallum: Northland MP says Transpower owes the region for the losses due to the downed pylon

Northland's MP wants Transpower to write the region a cheque after a pylon toppled north of Helensville, cutting power to much of the north. 

It's found contractor Omexom's team leader was distracted sandblasting as unsupervised inexperienced workers removed the bolts from three legs at once.  

Transpower says it can't compensate businesses but says residents can contact their retailer. 

Grant McCallum told Mike Hosking he's sat down with Transpower to discuss some kind of donation, but they were very far apart.  

He says about 10 times the figure they offered would be more relevant. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I mean, it's hard to believe the Transpower Parland story
isn't really I mean, the report tells us what we
already knew. Two workers no training under the bolts tower
falls over, power goes out. Not only weren't they trained,
I suppose that's the new part of the story. Not
only weren't they trained, they didn't get proper supervision either.
So now we presumably talk about compensation or do we.
Northerland's MP Grant McCallum's with us, Grant, very good morning

(00:22):
to you.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, good morning Mike. Every time you hear it, you
just wonder, don't you just wonder how this possibly happened
and highlights why we actually do need to get some
recompense for the people of Northland, that's.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
For sure, exactly. But the report says the compensation part
of the question was not in their purview. Who owns
and runs with this now.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well that's up to the north of people like my
South de lairs of Northland, And it gets stuck in
to sit down and Transpound say, actually, you owe the
people of Northon a lot of anger out there. You've
heard it from the business community this morning that are
really frustrated they feel that they had burrowed something and
actually the wider community, which has been my pitch, is

(01:01):
for the wider community to get to get some decent
a decent check from the from Transpower, which we can
use the benefit all of Northland because everybody was affected.
The power went out to the whole province.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
What what When you sit down with them, they'll go, oh,
look at some mex and go see them. Is that
fair or not?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I don't know. I'm not in that conversation, but actually
know they I have sat down with them and that
that wasn't that didn't come into it. They understand the
relationship directly with Northern This is through Transpower, not through Mexin.
That's their issue. Good right, so very much had that
conversation directly with them. It's about Transpower putting things right

(01:38):
for Northland by taking this seriously and recognizing the live
of anger out there.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
So when you had that conversation with Transpower, was there
a pen involved quivering over a.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Check at that point? Not at that point yet, but
we know it would be fair to say the sort
of general number they threw around was significantly lower than
I was thinking it was relevant. I said a fact
of ken of what you're talking about might be more relevant.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
So we're talking tens of millions, Well, no, not.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
That high, but seven figures talking at seven three.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Okay, so it's a million plus. And are they of
a mind that that's what it will come to or
is there a fight here?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I think there might be a little bit of a
fighter initially, but I would like to think that particularly
after the support, which, by the way, why do you
need seventy three pages and one hundred and tweety pages
profession actually tell us that someone took too many bolts off.
I mean, you know who that would be a great
job to get it. Can get it, you know, but

(02:35):
you know why you need that beyond me? But no,
they they need to come with some serious coin and
take it serious, and they need to come up to North,
need to come to the North in front of the
people of North and so they actually feel and understand
the level of anger and eat stuff here.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Couldn't agree more. Go well, Grant, appreciate it very much,
Grant mckellum. What I mean before the break about everything
that's wrong with this country is you can't make this up.
It is so bad that you literally can't make it up.
We had the woman who's now gone, whose name I
can't remember, who was the head of Transpower on the
program on the day, and you looked at the pictures
and you saw them no bolts in the holes, and
you said, they take the bolts out. And then she

(03:09):
got all ropie with me for you know, jumping the gun.
Seventy three pages, as Grant says later, and some dumb
report costing thousands of dollars stating the bloody obvious. Two
idiots who go haven't got a brain cell to rub together.
Let me ask you this question. Even if you had
never been trained to look after a pylon before, which
most of us happened, when they said go clean, it

(03:29):
would the first thing you do is undo all the bolts.
Is that the first thing? Honestly, even with no training
and no supervision whatsoever, all they do is give you
a still water blaster and say go clean. That would
the first thing you do be to take all the
bolts out. No, So that's what's wrong with New Zealand.
One they don't care. Two they don't train, three they
don't supervise. Four they're inconfident. And then they even want

(03:54):
to apologize and write a proper check. For more from
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