Chaos as new ferries and harbour bill doubles from $1.5bn to $3bn, New Zealand government refuses to pay for Labour incompetence and KiwiRail cancels the ferries

From the NZ Herald today:

The Government has declined KiwiRail’s request for an extra $1.47 billion for portside infrastructure needed for Cook Strait’s new mega-ferries.

KiwiRail says it cannot proceed without further Government funding and its board will now oversee the wind-down of the project and review plans for the vital transport connection.

The state-owned enterprise was replacing its increasingly unreliable and ageing Interislander fleet of three ferries with two new rail-enabled ferries under the Inter-island Resilience Connection project (iReX).

The stakes were high after Kaitaki narrowly avoided disaster this year when it lost power in the middle of Cook Strait with 864 people on board and started drifting towards Wellington’s rocky South Coast.

A $551m contract was signed with a South Korean shipyard back in 2021 to build the new ferries. KiwiRail has confirmed this contract will be terminated.

The last publicly available cost estimate for the new ferries and the portside infrastructure was $1.45b.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-declines-to-fund-cook-strait-mega-ferry-cost-blowout/S6IKNKO6KJCI3HOWDRPTQB6WOU/

As the two essential, lifeline, new ferries are cancelled by KiwiRail, the Scottish Government keeps the two new CalMac ferries construction online in the interests of vulnerable island communities.

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