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Winston Peters.
Photo: RNZ / REECE PADIER
Rail Minister Winston Peters responded to the labor suggestion that he has some responsibility for the ferry fights, saying that what he ordered in 2020 was not what the work ended up trying to build.
Peters revealed on Monday the Internal Balsa Plan of the coalition government, which he said it would be “billions of dollars” than the Labour’s Irex project, which the government has lined in December 2023.
The new interrislander ferries that are being delivered by 2029 will be about 200m long, 28m wide and can be able to serve, Peters said – about 20m shorter and two meters thinner than the original plan.
Peters said the Picton marine infrastructure would be replaced, but Wellington’s will be modified and reused, not rebuilt. Most of the IREX plan cost explosion was due to infrastructure updates needed to serve the larger ships.
Talking to Morning report On Tuesday, Peters said it was “a massive economy because they would build, as I said, a Picton Taj Mahal and a Sydney opera house in Wellington, and we couldn’t afford it.”
“What we’re going to do is use as much as we can as in Wellington … We have to rebuild in Picton. And we’ll have new ferries for the next 30 years.”
The new ferries would not be Toyotas or Ferraris, but a “Porsche who can do the job,” he said.
Although those who will build the new ferries were not yet known, Peters said they would be sailing in the 2029 Cook Strait. The original plan, developed when Peters was Rail minister in the government led by 2017-2020 workers, had them in service from 2026.
Hyundai, the original company hired to build the ferries – which represented hundreds of millions of dollars at break rates – was in the race to build the new ones.
“This is one of the competitors, but, as I said, we are not even telling the competitors that they are in the mixture here because we want to ensure – it is like a solid commercial practice,” said Peters.
“It’s a solid business. You don’t let someone else know what you are thinking, otherwise they have the advantage of you. Our job is to be smart and wise and keep doing what our ancestors have done – go buy some good ferries for work and continue with it.”
Chris Hipkins.
Photo: RNZ / SAMUEL RILLSTONE
After the Monday’s announcement, labor leader Chris Hipkins said that perhaps ordered the larger ferries to be a mistake – but it was also the mistake of Peters.
“With the benefit of the 2020 retrospective, accepting Winston Peters’s recommendation that we should opt for two mega ferries in the first place was probably not the wisest decision.
“Two smaller ferries, which is where the government has arrived now, could have been better from the beginning – not what Winston Peters recommended.”
The case of original Irex project business in 2018 put its cost of $ 775 million. In November 2019, this estimate had risen to nearly $ 1.4 billion.
In May 2020, Peters – then minister of state -owned companies – announced that the government was looking for a preferred shipyard to build two new railroad ships. In a statement, Peters spoke to “larger and better ships” and criticized the failure of previous governments to invest in rail and related infrastructure.
An agreement was closed with Hyundai in 2021, after Peters Peters and his first New Zealand party came out of Parliament and the work alone performed the scholarship ropes. In February 2023, the estimated cost increased to $ 2.6 billion and, in November of that year, $ 3 billion – Kiwirail citing the expanding cost of building new terminals.
Hipkins said that if the government’s proposal on Monday was what Peters created “the first time, we may not have this conversation.”
‘Naked Lie’
Talking to Morning reportThe Tangue Utakere Labor Transportation Door also blamed Peters.
“It was Winston Peters who was involved in negotiating first, the size of the original ferry. So this must certainly be something that has been difficult and I think a bitter and hard pill that Rail’s new minister had to swallow.”
Peters called it “naked lie.”
“This is the first time someone said that,” he said Morning report.
“In May 2020, I ordered two ferries at $ 401 million to enter the mixture in terms of what we were asking … when I came back [into Parliament]It was going to 80 % in infrastructure, 20 % being in these huge ferries and we will never be able to pay for it … that’s the truth. “
He said the $ 300 million interruption fee that the government may have to pay to Hyundai was a “inappropriate name.”
“They are talking about the cost of $ 300 million. No, it will be dramatically less than that. We are going to less than $ 200 million and we have not even arrived.
“So as we move forward, there will be serious economies for some of them is reusable in terms of pronouncing the project we are talking about now. So all this is a victory … It was a terrible series of errors from the previous government.”
Peters could not tell what would be the expected cost of the new ferries, saying that “would give the vessel builder the advantage” in any negotiation.
Tangi Utakere.
Photo: RNZ / SAMUEL RILLSTONE
“We know it won’t explode because we have a competition happening here now, while the previous government went to a company – and this was a very, very solid company, by the way – but instead of ordering what was suitable for purpose, they went and ordered those larger ships, which required a massive explosion.
“Who on Earth thought that what we were trying to buy on two ferries would end where 80 % of the cost would be in infrastructure? No one was informed of that. And Picton and Wellington could not pay that.”
But he admitted that the taxpayers of Wellington and Picton could be on the hook, but insisted that it would be less than under the old plan.
“Eighty percent of the previous government plan to buy ferries was not about ferries. It was the infrastructure. They had one, here we go: ‘We can tear the taxpayer, we can tear the raise bars. Let’s do what we feel’ and that just exploded.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said earlier First The original plans were “gold bathed” and “as much as possible,” while the new plan was “the minimum viable.”
“The last government project involved really large ships, much larger than anything that was used in that port in Marlborough or Wellington before, so it required massive demolition and reconstruction. We are saving these costs, but New Zealand will still have new ships.”
She insisted that the total cost, even at costs and breaks, would be cheaper than Irex.
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