Kioa. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government's being warned it must invest in New Zealand's aging infrastructure. It comes after a week of infrastructure woes, with the Defense Force plane breaking down, a track fault canceling all trains in Auckland, and an inter island a ferry running aground. These are all areas that have been issued before. So what stopped us from fixing these problems before they become
a catastrophe. We'll discuss the latter with the Infrastructure and Z's Policy Director Michelle McCormick. But first on the Front Page ends at Herald, Wellington reporter Georgina Campbell explains what went wrong with the inter island a ferry. Georgina, can you tell me what happened on Friday night with the inter islander?
Yes? So the other terry, which is Kerry Rowl's only rail enabled fairy, departed Picton at about nine forty five pm on Friday. It then swiftly suffered what has been described as a steering failure and ran aground shortly after. Now it's worth noting that other terry had recently had an upgrade to its steering system. Thankfully, it ran into sand and mud rather than big rocks, so the hull remained watertight. I think it's fair to say it could have been a lot worse. It was a freight only sailing,
so there were forty seven people on board. Of those, eight were commercial vehicle drivers and thirty nine were crew. No one was injured. They did have to spend the night on the ship before being safely escorted off, and it was first thought that the ferry could be refloated the morning that's the Saturday morning, but authorities decided to wait until later that night at about nine pm for high tide. The effort to refloat the ship was successful.
It then spent the night anchored in the harbor before returning to Picton Wharf. The fairy is now detained and there are several investigations underway, including by Maritime New Zealand and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission.
Is this the same fairy that previously lost power in February last year?
It is the same fairy, and in a sort of incredible twist of fate, I received a summary of Maritime New Zealand's investigation into exactly that incident earlier last week under the Official Information Act. I've been chasing it for months and it just happened to land in my inbox
the same week that that faery ran the ground. So just to take you back to February last year, this time, Aditteri was approaching the entrance to the Tory Channel at six pm with five hundred and thirty eight people on board when it experienced what this Maritime New Zealand summary has called a power blackout. The summary said this blackout only lasted a few seconds before the emergency generator kicked in. However,
the vessel was without propulsion and drifting. It was about three point four to two nautical miles from the nearest point of land. Full propulsion was restored about twenty minutes later. But the really interesting thing with this is the subsequent investigation and what went wrong. So it found the power outage was caused by the failure of a part in
the diesel generator called an actuator. Some spy reflex tape, which is tape used to hold wires and the hydraulic hose in place, had been used inside this actuator, and the report said that over time this tape had degraded, causing debris to mix with the oil inside the actuator and the presence of this contaminated oil had caused the actuator to seize and that's what led to this power blackout.
Now inter Islander has acknowledged this tape should not be used in oil immersed systems and it has since really upped the anti on its maintenance protocols.
You've written a lot about how the previous government ordered new Mega Fairies to replace this aging fleet and the current government canceled the project once they got into overt My message to KiwiRail has been the Ferrari is not the only car in the garage.
I think it's time we had a lot.
Can see if there's a Toyota Corolla or maybe some secondhand tesselas well.
The fact of the matter is that we don't even have a Susuki Swift sized replacement model on the government's radar, and Keywis deserve better.
How far along were those new Fairies when Nichola Willis pulled the plug on them?
Yeah, So there are two parts to so this part of the story, which is the mega ferries themselves and the port side infrastructure needed to support them, So Nicola Willis effectively canceled the project after Kiwi Raw asked for an extra one point five billion dollars, and that cost escalation was primarily due to the port side infrastructure, which
clearly was not sorted out at that point. Considering Kii Raw was asking for such a large amount of money, the mega ferries themselves were reasonably far along, so a contract had been signed with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard based in South Korea back in twenty twenty one. But just noting that Kei Row signed this contract to build the mega ferries without having sorted out the port side infrastructure needed
to accommodate them now. Earlier this month, I reported that you know this, the mega ferries were so far along that engine parts for them had been built and tested before the contract was canceled. The safety management and control
system for both ships have been tested and accepted. The dockyard also blasted and primed some metal for later stages and produced five plates, so basically it felt like it was now or never in terms of that window for Nikola Willis to cancel the Fairies before they started doing serious steel cutting.
And the government last week criticized Kiwi Row for how they're maintaining their fleet.
We also have to get the right ships for the job, and ki Row must maintain its existing ships to the safe standard required.
What's the latest you've seen on what the new plan is to actually replace them?
While following the grounding of Arditari, ministers have revealed that, you know, they've received the final report from a Ministerial advisory Group that was tasked with looking at the future of keey Row's cookstrait service. Nikola Willis and Paul Goldsmith, who are the shareholding ministers for Kiwi Row, announced this
group after they effectively canceled the Mega Fury project. So the Ministerial Advisory Group have provided ministers with options to replace the fairies, and Transport Minister to them, Brown said, you know that that work is progressing with urgency and ministers would take recommendations to cabinets. So I would be expecting to see some clarity on what the government's plan be as in the coming weeks.
And Georgina, you probably know more about these fairies than anyone outside of government. What's your hot take? And how do we go about actually fixing this problem.
There's only one way to fix this problem, and that's replacing the inter Island A fleet. The mega ferries were not due to arrive until twenty twenty six, so the auditory grounding would not have been prevented if the Mega fair project was still going ahead. But the aging and increasingly unreliable Interland A Fairies have been running on borrow time and it has felt like a serious incident like
this grounding has almost been inevitable. You know, as I've said, Nikola Willis announced the government's decision to cancel the project without a plan B, and there's some political risk in that. You know, the risk is that a major incident could happen on cook straight before the government got a new plan sought it. And we're sort of seeing that risk
play out to some degree following the auditory grounding. You know, it's worth noting this grounding isn't quite the government's worst in to island a nightmare, but I think it would still have ministers waking up in a cold sweat. The government's worst nightmare, it would be something more like last year's Kaentucky incident. If that Fairy had not narrowly avoided disaster, so that's when there were eight hundred and sixty four
people on board. The ship lost power and cook straight and started drifting towards Wellington's rocky south coast and issued a may day call. Thankfully, power was restored and the ferry linked back to Wellington. It could have been one of New Zealand's worst maritime disasters, though we know that Wellington Hospital was put on standby for me casualties and preparation for the worst. So public confidence in the Fairies
has been shaken. Between that Kentucky mayday call, now the uditary running aground, and all the other mechanical faults in between those incidents, I think the interra island of Fleet cannot hang on much longer, and no one wants to find out what a third serious incident might look like.
Thanks for joining us, Georgina. It's not just ferries having issues, planes, trains, powered pylons, They've all had issues.
In the last week, the New Zealand Defense Force Boeing seven five seven was stopped in Port Moresby when a fuse issue was identified. The Prime Minister was forced to go the rest of the way commercially to Japan.
Northland's power crisis was caused by contractors removing too many nuts from the base plates of the power pylon that toppled. On Thursday, Train services on Auckland's eastern line are suspended due to a track vault at Middlemore.
To discuss what.
Needs to be done, we're joined now by policy director at Infrastructure and Z Michelle McCormack. A dud Defense Force aircraft aging pylons toppling over and cutting power to an entire region are now an inter islander ferry crashing into the coastline.
Is this good enough? No, it's not. It's pretty poor actually for a country there thinks we're world class. Yeah, we're definitely failing across a lot of fronts and infrastructure.
New Zealand has underinvested in core infrastructure for years now, well below the average OECD spend. ASB estimates it's going to cost one trillion dollars to fix infrastructure and bring it up to standard.
Does that sound about right to you? It's an awful big number, isn't it. I think there's other things that can be done too. I mean that was a piece of work that edited up all the missing infrastructure we have at the moment, but there's actually other ways to address things. We could be using our existing infrastructure a lot smarter.
There has been talk of congestion charging and looking at how we use particularly the roading network, so we're not just having to build to meet those capacity and peak times. But yeah, it is a big number. We definitely have a huge deficit. The Infrastructure Commission is putting it at
over two hundred billion dollars. But you know, we know right across the board, from our water systems, our road systems, the Fairies, the Air Force and Defense Force, and our electricity, we're just not set up for the future a leat alone actually dealing with our needs at the current time.
Well, our new Fairies got canceled because they were getting a bit too expensive. Defense Minister Judith Collins said it would cost millions to buy new planes for the Defense Force.
And now the christ.
Church Cathedral I've seen in the news has downgraded the seismic strength of its rebuild project after the cathedral was damaged in the twenty eleven earthquake.
Are we just a bit cheap? What's going on here? I think it's partly because we don't have a agreed pipeline and plan of work. We've just been with a delegation over in Denmark and they have a much more varied coalition government, but their infrastructure is not something they
actually have a political debate on. All the parties in government get to decide and are involved in the development of the projects right from the beginning, so they have buy in about what Denmark needs, and then as these up to seventy year plans are put into place, there's political agreement in support right across the wall, from the planning right into the development and implementation. And I think
that's what we're missing at the moment. We might have a good idea or a solution at hand, but often we're not looking at all the moving parts. For instance, the theories were a great buy. We had a really good deal, but we also needed to look at the terminal and what was required there, and I think there came as a bit of a surprise, particularly the rail requirements that was much more signalivocant, the larger theories, the biggest stabling areas that was needed, and I think you know,
the surprise of adding all that in as well. Yeah, it was a bit of a shock defense force. Yeah, poor defense force has always been struggling and actually deciding what we need and getting agreement on that going forward. Is you know something that we haven't faced up to.
Is it really time for infrastructure not to be a political football, but really having, like you said, like Denmark, having cross party plans that are decades in the making.
Absolutely, infrastructure is a long term investment. What we have around at the moment, you know, it's more than fifty years old and it's doing its job, but you know it's going to need renewing and we need to have good support, political support right across the spectrum to buy in. What are the priorities, What are we going to support, what's our vision for the country. How many people are
we actually looking to have in New Zealand? You know, how do we provide all the services and infrastructure that they are going to need, right from education, health, the roading network right across the board. We don't actually have a really good picture of that and then planning over multiple decades and multiple governments of how that's going to be implemented.
How can we prioritize projects when all of these things can be classed as critical.
Yeah, it's a hard one, isn't it, And money's not always there to match. I think some crucial ones. I mean, you know, our cookstrap theories are our State Highway one. You know, if we had a massive pothole on State Highway one, you know, we do something about it and focus on it. And I think we're getting to the stage where we really do need to, you know, start looking at priorities. These are strategic investments. It's not just the immediate costs and benefits you know, that we're looking at.
They're actually strategically important for our economy and for our social and economic well being.
And in terms of the economy, I guess the cost of doing nothing would increase the risk to New Zealand's economic well being. And of course, with increasing risks associated with climate change, how underprepared are we for another natural disaster and how does our ancient infrastruction play into it.
We definitely are under prepared. We do know that extreme weather events are going to be happening more regularly. It was good to see with the Regional Infrastructure Fund that has just been announced that two hundred million has been air marked already for flood protection works. So that's starting to address some of those known issues across our network, particularly on the roading side. We know some areas that you know are very prone to slips to flooding, and
there is a plan to work through those. Kwei Rail has just also had some work looking at parts of their network. So it's a slow burn. It's not going to be addressed overnight. But I think as we go in and renew and undertake maintenance, are there things that we can do to build more resilience back into our infrastructure and make sure that we are looking to the future, that we're are preparing for the climate that's actually already with us with extreme events.
New Zealand publicly funded cost blowouts include terminals to need in hospital state, hiwe Wan, Northland, Auckland, like Rail, christ Church Cathedral, police computers is not I mean, I could go on. Is it time to look more towards privatization of our infrastructure?
Do you think maybe taking some of the discipline from the private sector and suddenly we're they're looking to be public private partnerships. I think there is more focus on the whole of life costs of infrastructure and the services that we make sure that we have an enduring piece of infrastructure to start with, but also that the maintenance and ongoing renewal costs aren't prohibitive as well. I think that's a really important part that the private sector can
show us. I think often we're not really clear about what the issue is, what the problem is, do we have agreement on that, and then are we really clear on the solutions and the options available in making sure that they had some feature proofing to them, but they're well coordinated with the existing infrastructure and networks, and so that we really know what product we're actually by the start, and we don't start changing the scope, because I think
there is the biggest issue. It's a changing of scope, introducing new things, adding on as we go through, and that's where we start to blow out the costs. I think we've had quite a few really tough years with the unexpectedness of COVID and lockdown's international importation costs and construction material inflation has been extraordinary, and I think we're coming up to the other side of that. I think that's some explanation of what's happened over the last sort
of four years. But I think going forward, we really need to get a grip on what we are undertaking and what we're committing to and you know, can we do things smarter, can things be produced locally?
Can you touched on this before? But a lot has been floated in terms of new funding models. We've got tolls, congestion charges, PPPs, the consensus on the best way for do you think, well, do you think it's an amalgamation of all of them.
I think it's horses for courses. Absolutely not every project would align itself to having private funding, and we need to really make sure that we've got the right projects that will attract investment. But also it's really important that these projects also have a revenue stream and it's a good opportunity to bring both the construction sector in as well as the organization that will be operating, for instance,
a toll road. I think on the congestion pricing, I think that has its place around city centers, and we've got to be really clear what we're setting out to achieve there. There has to be alternative transport for people,
so there is a choice. People can either travel at those peak times and pay, or there is alternative transport or this flexibility and lower cost of traveling at off peak, but it's definitely not just one solution for all, and I think we've just got to be really clear where we are looking to bring improved PPP models into play, and really clear about the projects, and also to build
back our expertise. We haven't undertaken full public private partnerships for quite a few years and we need to actually ensure, particularly on the government side, that we have the capability and capacity to actually manage those properly too.
Does New Zealand even have the workforce and expertise and resources to fix our infrastructure needs we do.
I think we need to be really smart around the phasing, and I think it's really important why there's a bit of a downturn in both central government work and local government at the moment, as we're getting new annual plans, long term plans in place and the government budgets kicking in with the actual projects flowing through from the National and Transport program, I think it's really important that there's enough activity, that we keep our workforce here, that we
have some minimal level of activity, and that people can see the pipeline we've got some certainty around that so they continue to invest in training and education.
We don't have an continuity of work, so to get the skilled people we need, we have to pay a premium and then when they finish the job, they go back overseas. They can't roll on to the next one and the next one and the next one.
And actually probably a bit of a task on everyone involved in infrastructure and construction is actually demonstrating what a fabulous career opportunity there is here and by opportunity to build skills and to apply them to some pretty awesome projects like for instance, the City Rail Link has been amazing and it has had a Rangataki project to train and encourage young people into construction as a career and to provide wrap around pastoral care and to encourage them
to build their skills in training and knowledge.
And just lastly, Michelle, in terms of infrastructure and the priorities we now face and the massive bill that we're looking towards it, you know, trillion dollars, billions dollars, what's the best way forward?
I think the work that the Infrastructure Commission has been working on both with the infrastructure pipeline and quantifying that, I think they've got one hundred and twenty seven billion dollars committed at the moment and identified and committed funding, and then the next lot of projects that are sitting behind that priority projects and making sure that they have some certainty for the sector that they do know what is coming, where they're located, what sort of skills of
the workforce is needed to go forward, and getting some political certainty so we don't have the on off cycle that we have seen over recent years. That you know, we need infrastructure, we need roads, we need public transport, we need electricity, energy investment, we need those theories. Sure, we just need to get an agreement to actually go forward in a steady state manner that we're not stopping and starting continuously.
Yeah, because what's the point in this government signing a billion dollar deal for a new ferry, for instance, in the next one come and then scrapping it.
Yeah, a lot of wasted time and effort goes into that, and we'd like to see where we are committing to something. You know, the time and investment, it's worthwhile, and then we are actually getting something out at the end.
Thanks for joining us, Michelle. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzet Herald dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Siles with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.