ALMOST 12 months after the NZ Government pulled the plug on KiwiRail’s Cook Strait ferry replacement program the NZ Herald has revealed no settlement has been reached with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard.
KiwiRail had a NZD 551 million fixed-price contract with the South Korean builder, for two rail/ro-paxes to replace the aging and trouble-plagued Interisland line fleet.
However, on 13 December last year finance minister Nicola Willis ordered KiwiRail to terminate the iReX project after cost estimates for new terminal infrastructure at Wellington and Picton blew out.
It is now also almost six months since the government received recommendations – still not released to the public – from an independent Ministerial Advisory Group tasked with finding the best and most affordable way forward.
The Herald’s Georgina Campbell, who has been assiduous in her pursuit of the topic, reported late last week that KiwiRail confirmed the negotiations with HMD were continuing, but all details are “commercially sensitive”. KiwiRail did not address questions as to why it was taking so long, Ms Campbell said.
Minister for State Owned Enterprises Paul Goldsmith told the publication it was a complex issue KiwiRail was “working their way through as fast as they can”. He said there was no chance the government was reconsidering exiting the contract.
In June, KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy told the Herald HMD had put a claim on the table: “There’s a lot of complexity to it so, there are a number of elements of the claim. We’ve got international experts, maritime legal experts, just going through the claim with us line by line – assessing what’s reasonable, what’s fair.”
Maritime Union of New Zealand national secretary Carl Findlay said the time taken to exit the contract “seems really weird”. The union held a rally in Wellington yesterday (17 November) calling on the government to invest in publicly owned and operated rail-capable ferries.
