Andrew Dickens: We're still waiting for answers on the ferries

You could hear the disappointment oozing out of the Maritime Union Spokesperson yesterday as we found out the break fee for the Interislander ferries would be around 300 million.   

The ferries only cost 551 million at 60 per cent of the cost of the ferries.  

All up 1 billion dollars has been spent on nothing at all.  

It’s making Labour’s light rail fiasco look trivial. 

The Union guy called the situation Nicola Willis’ mistake. And it is.  

She’d be hoping to be remembered as the Saviour of the economy, but she will never escape the billion-dollar boat botch up.  

A botch up she jumped into just to strike a blow against Labour and KiwiRail  

As Winston Peters rushes to patch things up we seem to forget what the real cost of the project is. 

It’s the wharves and more particularly the Wellington wharves  

They need to be renovated.  

They need to be earthquake strengthened.  

We need to decide if they need rail infrastructure so we can roll a train on a ship.  

We need to decide the capacity of the terminals.  

These are questions that never make the public discussion.

As we wait for Winston’s grand answer to a 3-billion-dollar question, I hope that he’ll cover those issues as much as the floating stock.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So did you hear the disappointment oozing out of that
maritime union guy I just spoke to when we find out,
of course, the break fee for the inter island ferries
will be around three hundred million hurricanes, it's more like
a billion. But that recon felt like a reckon, if
you know what I mean. The fairies, by the way,
only cost five hundred and fifty one million dollars, so
three hundred mil that's sixty percent of the cost of
the ferries just to break the contract. So if we

(00:22):
do accept that a billion dollars has been spent on
nothing at all, it's making labours light rail fiasco look trivial.
The union guy caught all the situation Nikola Willis's mistake,
and I have to say I agree. She is hoping
to be remembered as the savior of the economy, but
she will never escape this billion dollar boat botch up,
a botch up she jumped into because I think she

(00:44):
just wanted to strike a blow against labor and they're spending.
And also Kiwi Rail, who seemed to think the government
is an open bank. Winston Peters is rushing to patch
things up. We always seem to forget what the real
cost of the project is. Yeah, five hundred and fifty
mil on some boats, but it's the wharves and more
particularly the Wellington Wolves. They need to be renovated. They

(01:05):
need to be earthquake strengthened, they need to be future proofed.
We need to decide if they need real infrastructure at
all so we can roll a train on a ship
or do we have a terminal where we swap off
over the cargo. We need to decide the capacity of
the terminals. And these are all questions that never make
the public decision. It was a three to four billion
dollar project. The boats are only five hundred and fifty

(01:27):
millli of that, So where's the debate on all the rest?
And as we wait for Winston's grand answer to this
three billion dollar question, I hope he will cover those
issues as much as the floating stock. For more from
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