Andrew Dickens: The political games hiding the real issues behind the Interislander

Anyone who thought the ferry debate was over for summer was very wrong.  The weekend papers were full of reckons and I reckon it’s because it’s a bigger piece of infrastructure than many realise. Sure a lot of tourists and locals travel on it, heading on adventures or heading home, but $30 billion dollars worth of freight between the North and South Island depends on it too. So the reckons were about who screwed it up more. Nicola Willis, Grant Robertson or KiwiRail itself.  Then there was debate over Winston’s hijacking of the job and whether this will play out well or badly for him.  The conversation about rail enabled or rail capable rumbled on and whether just letting Bluebridge have the whole job was a good idea, since their boats don't seem to break down or run aground. Steven Joyce commented on the nostalgic choice of Kaiwharawhara for the ferry port, a very earthquake prone reclamation. But if not there then where Steven? Relocating the port to a seismically more stable location could be even more expensive.  It was all politically tinged, and that to me is the big problem.  The best thing I saw was a comment by the political commentator Liam Hehir, who noted that when Grant Robertson first saw the plans KiwiRail had he told them to go back and try again.  Then he failed to put the expenditure into the pre election financial update. That means one of two things.  They were going to hide it, but $3 to $4 billion is really too big to hide.  Or, more likely, they hated the idea too.  In other words no one a year ago knew what to do and no one liked the idea on the table.  How refreshing might it have been if that was said openly a year ago.  Then we could have had a properly informed debate and made a grown up decision, instead we’ve had posturing and virtue signalling about who’s right or wrong, left or right, while a $$30 billion dollar trade route slowly falls apart. This whole thing is another example of how the best infrastructure decisions are made without politicians. Because they play games that mask the real issues.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.