John MacDonald: New ferries by 2029? I'll believe it when I see it

Four more years. That's how long we’re going to have to wait for KiwiRail's new interisland ferries. But I reckon it will turn out being longer than that.   The Government says it will be December 2029. By then, we will have had two elections.   But I don’t think it will happen in that timeframe, because I listened this morning to someone who knows a bit about this. Mark Thompson’s his name. He was in charge of the Government’s ferry ministerial advisory group.    He reckons the Government is a bit on the optimistic side, thinking the ferries can be here in four years’ time.  He was talking this morning about decarbonisation within the maritime sector creating huge, worldwide demand for new ships. As he puts it, he thinks the Government will need its spinnaker up and calm seas to meet the deadline, because of what's happening internationally.   Spinnaker up and a calm sea. A wing and a prayer. Fingers crossed. Sounds exactly like the way we do infrastructure here in New Zealand, doesn’t it?   I thought Mark Thompson sounded pretty unimpressed with the announcement. That will be because the Government has ignored his committee’s advice to not go with ferries capable of carrying rail wagons.    His advice was that ferries that could only carry trucks would be cheaper. But Winston, of course, was all-for ferries that can carry rail wagons from the get-go.   So maybe Mark Thompson’s nose is out of joint a bit. But I’m listening to what he has to say. Because he’s the guy who looked into this whole ferry thing after Finance Minister Nicola Willis pulled the plug on the former Labour government’s iReX project.   Winston Peters isn’t buying any talk about delays though and says the new ferries will be here by the end of 2029. But when you dig further into his announcement yesterday, you see that he’s talking about the ferries being no frills, on one hand, but also saying that many of the costs he’s cutting will need to be paid for somehow in the future.   And these are the costs for the on-land facilities at Picton and Wellington – which he’s suggesting will have to be covered by the ports themselves.   He’s saying that investment is needed at Picton, but he reckons the facilities in Wellington have got another 30 years in them.   Again, doesn’t that sound so familiar when it comes to infrastructure in this country? “We can get away with what we’ve got for a bit longer” – the same for the ferries themselves. The ones that keep clapping out.   As for the new ships - if we do end up competing with the rest of the world for new vessels because of a global influx of orders, we could end up waiting more than four years.   That's why I’ll believe it when I see it.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.