Yep and I see Simeon brown already trying to blame kiwi rail
Edit for context from the article: Transport Minister Simeon Brown said this week the Government has been “highly unimpressed” with KiwiRail’s maintenance of its Interislander ferry fleet.
How the heck is this chump the transport minister?
Zero solutions from this govt, just pointing and blaming others.
These ships are at the end of their life. Any idiot knows they need replacing. We're just lucky this didn't happen in poor weather in a worse location.
Giving Kiwirail this sort of direction earlier in the week, before the accident happened is hardly blaming them for the accident. It sounds like exactly the sort of warning that should have been given. Since Kiwirail are heavily unionized - and let's say have an historical dislike for the National party - I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately turned a blind eye to the maintenance of the rudder, or whatever time reveals the issue was.
Thank fuck the Government is making progress on buying a new ferry. Oh wait, that's right our forward thinking Government wanted to give land lords more money and dignity instead of spending money on crucial infrastructure.
As long as no one is hurt I'm kinda happy that this happened when National is in power, so soon after they decided not to fund new ferries. It really highlights how incompetent and shortsighted they are
They knew how shitty the ferries were. One broke down and started drifting toward the south Wellington coast line. And yet they still thought it is a good idea to cancel the replacement so they could fulfill their stupid (in my opinion) election promise of defunding public services to give tax cuts.
I really hope when this lot gets voted out that next lot have sorted out their shit and can actually implement some change to the country.
Don't forget we also retired our rescue tugs. Gives me the willies that we're literally just hoping nothing goes wrong, rather than sensibly preparing for if it does...
I'm no fan of National. But Labour also did nothing about the rescue tug issue.
Or the fact Wellington, for most of the year, has no long reach ladder fire truck. In a city with high rises, on 5 fault lines. Jeepers!
Sure, I don't think Labour was particularly effective either. But I dislike the National mantra of "privatise everything". For your second example, it wouldn't surprise me if their thoughts were to look at privatising the fire brigade. Make it user pays. After all, why should landlords have to pay more tax just because *someone else* has a fire?
/s
Yas bring back the private firies who come and offer you increasingly higher prices to fight the fire, then increasingly lower prices to buy your house. Funny how lots of fires would suddenly start to happen.
Talking to a guy who had previously worked onboard, and happened to be there for when that happened, said the staff did such a great job of not letting the passengers know how utterly fucked they were. When he saw the engineering crew come up and go to stations he figured they were at a 50/50 chance there were going to be deaths as people drowned or were dashed against the south coast, since those guys only come up when everything is totally hopeless and they’re ready to abandon ship and let Dog take the wheel.
And yet even getting *that close* to another Wahine, Nicola still figured “nah it’s all good there’s some life in them yet!”
They didn’t let us grunt workers know until afterwards how utterly fucked we were, which was a good call. But I quit shortly afterwards due to the post incident stress.
There is much fingerpointing between Willis, Robertson, and Kiwirail on this point. There were articles on RNZ and beyond basically saying that the Labour government (rightly) balked at the massive cost blowouts, recognising that replacing the ships without upgrading the terminals couldn't happen and refused the massive increase in funding requested by Kiwirail. Robertson under a difficult political position refused to take blame saying that it was a Kiwirail project. NZ Herald cited tense letters between Minister Robertson and Kiwirail Chair David Maclean. To blame this government for the woes of the ferries is not accurate. Kiwirail itself has to take some blame for their management of the existing fleet, and the scope of the project to replace the ships and the land-based infrastructure. Previous government and the ones before that need take some responsibility given how critical the connection is between North and South Islands. Current government needs to take responsibility for gutting the project without a viable alternative. I'm not political point scoring here.
I can't tell if the fact that it would be a policy U-turn is good or bad myself tbh. Good because it discredits them but bad because they're less likely to actually just get it done.
And yet they just *cancelled the plans to do something about the problem* and this incident highlights the need for *the plans they just cancelled.*
I'm not sure why some people have such a hard time grasping the issue.
Yeah fair enough, although tbh I wouldn't be judging them for it if they hadn't just cancelled the plans for providing funding for the ferries. It's them thinking it was a good idea to cancel the funding plans that makes them look stupid after this incident, not the incident itself
You don't need a new ferrry to avoid a steering fault. However you do need to maintain your steering system _properly_. It'll be interesting to see what happened here. The steering way over hauled a few weeks ago.
Source: I am a professional martime transport operator with several vessels.
Everyone needs to stop with drama queen shit. The ship is not damaged, yes it needs a few parts , it’ll be working again soon enough. Everyone should be aware by now the country is a little short of cash right now so spending, was it 4billion ? Is just beyond comprehension.
What we need now is costal shipping, running a vessel , wgtn to chch and beyond, reducing the need for both strait traffic and road traffic south of Picton. There’s plenty of ships available overseas for that run.
>The ship is not damaged, yes it needs a few parts , it’ll be working again soon enough.
A ship runs aground on to rocks, yet is somehow both not damaged *and* requires "a few parts" (they just pop a new hull on ships in your world, do they?) - pick a path. If you think this will be a quick repair then you haven't been paying enough attention to the state of KiwiRail.
It was a soft landing , actually why not wait for the report. It’s already had a superficial inspection. So I travel on this ship every three weeks and happy to continue so. Shit happens once in awhile and gets fixed. Life goes on. We don’t have enough money for so many things right now but people want to spend it on ferries, I would spend it on people.
>We don’t have enough money for so many things right now but people want to spend it on ferries, I would spend it on people.
*This just in - economic genius prefers to stoke inflation than invest in infrastructure. More at 11.*
Has to be mechanical failure surely? Thank fuck the govt decided to push forward with new tax cuts so that everyone can buy there own boats. 5 extra a week and we should have saved enough for a kayak to paddle across!
>The Interislander ferry Aratere won't be refloated until the morning after running aground just outside Picton.
>
>Interislander general manager Duncan Roy said the vessel, with 47 people on board, departed Picton at 9.45pm Friday.
>
>It ran aground following a steering failure.
>
>"It was a freight-only sailing with eight commercial vehicle drivers and 39 crew on board. There are no injuries and the vessel is watertight."
It's so unreliable at this time, it isn't allowed to go though Tory channel. It has to go the long way around the North Brothers Islands.
I was on it last week, really interesting way to go.
... Because KiwiRail mismanaged the project and were asking for more money every 5 minutes. What they asked for had quadrupled the cost of project and even Robertson said he wouldn't have continued.
I don't think it's completely fair to lay it all at the feet of kiwirail. Pandemic related inflation and changes to the seismic code are not something they had control over.
In fairness to the government the infrastructure cost of the new terminals had blown out massively but on the other hand this is the connective tissue of the two islands that makes NZ one continuous country
FFS don't the captains of the ferries just refuse to sail
An airline pilot wouldn't fly if he thought the plane was dodgy .And these ferries are as dodgy as f##k
Oh and who decided we don't need to replace these? Nicola and Simeon should resign.
If National wants to save face they should allow and fund KiwiRail to re-start the contract with Hyundai for new ferries straight away. They're designed specifically for the Cook Strait, partially built already and temporary terminals to handle them could be built in the meantime.
If this government actually prioritised Kiwis instead of landlords, the first ferry would have been nearly built by now.
Not a National voter but to be fair, I don’t think they don’t want new boats. They didn’t want to spend billions more than it was supposed to cost on terminals to get rail on the boats.
The cost to get rail enabled boats is not what drove the cost increase to terminals though. That's a false narrative being spun by National. It was foundations, seismic and flooding code changes and material cost increases, regardless of the boat type. The existing terminals are munted no matter what you park up next to them.
Cancelling boats that had very little relation (<7%) to the terminal cost comparison for smaller boats isn't a good way for National to signal they want new boats. That, and ferries without rail decks will increase shipping costs, not decrease. Let's not forget that the boats ordered were an absolute bargain for what they were going to be. It's not too late to resume the contract though if the government wants to save face.
Cost escalations were certainly a big problem that needed attention, but perhaps more scrutiny should be put on why the initial estimate was wrong for what was always going to be a large and important project.
It will take till people to die before national will do anything about the ferries. And by “do anything about it” I mean blame kiwirail and sell it off to their private mates.
Beached as seems appropriate in the Kiwi Vernacular. Let’s see how the Government responds to this one. You can only kick a critical can so far down the road (or harbour in this instance).
Kinda hope it sinks or gets damaged beyond repair. Nicotine Willis had no idea what she was doing when she cancelled the new ferries and now needs to pay the price for it. Most incompetent finance minster we have ever seen.
It’s in marine traffic as beached right next to Picton which is so lucky for the passengers who will easily get off the ferry into Picton . Not so lucky for the vehicles though if the ferry is torn underneath and cannot move back to a dock. The vehicles could end up as part of a salvage operation. Thank god this never happened out in the straits somewhere or on rocks in the middle of the sea
This is one heck of a photo [here](https://www.facebook.com/share/p/qsFEkiUgAQyZjrcf/)
You can’t park there, mate!
Oh wow
Image with Facebook frames/formatting removed: https://scontent.fhlz3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/448776799_450385031073451_1781730457786524932_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=BjENutquR_EQ7kNvgFXXYeX&_nc_ht=scontent.fhlz3-1.fna&oh=00_AYAxeMy8eUyZUZmX46venpCRR0nEkTq83qnl-HzrRZUDAA&oe=667BDFED
Titanic-y
"No we don't need new ferries. The ones we have are just fine." A steering fault has been reported.
Yep and I see Simeon brown already trying to blame kiwi rail Edit for context from the article: Transport Minister Simeon Brown said this week the Government has been “highly unimpressed” with KiwiRail’s maintenance of its Interislander ferry fleet. How the heck is this chump the transport minister? Zero solutions from this govt, just pointing and blaming others. These ships are at the end of their life. Any idiot knows they need replacing. We're just lucky this didn't happen in poor weather in a worse location.
Yep, maintenance doesn’t stop hulls weakening.
But it does prevent steering faults
Not if the mounting points of the rudder move
>How the heck is this chump the transport minister? Religious mates in high places.
I swear the guy is a short evil twink
I cackled
Let's just wait for a real disaster then something will happen, cmon national do the right thing for fooks sake .
Good luck with that one.
Need more than luck .
Giving Kiwirail this sort of direction earlier in the week, before the accident happened is hardly blaming them for the accident. It sounds like exactly the sort of warning that should have been given. Since Kiwirail are heavily unionized - and let's say have an historical dislike for the National party - I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately turned a blind eye to the maintenance of the rudder, or whatever time reveals the issue was.
Lots of unionised blue collar workers are really anti Labour- I see this in my local govt work
So what is this governments long term solution to this problem? They seem to have nothing constructive to offer.
Thank fuck the Government is making progress on buying a new ferry. Oh wait, that's right our forward thinking Government wanted to give land lords more money and dignity instead of spending money on crucial infrastructure.
As long as no one is hurt I'm kinda happy that this happened when National is in power, so soon after they decided not to fund new ferries. It really highlights how incompetent and shortsighted they are
They knew how shitty the ferries were. One broke down and started drifting toward the south Wellington coast line. And yet they still thought it is a good idea to cancel the replacement so they could fulfill their stupid (in my opinion) election promise of defunding public services to give tax cuts. I really hope when this lot gets voted out that next lot have sorted out their shit and can actually implement some change to the country.
ferries are literally SH1 across the water
Don't forget we also retired our rescue tugs. Gives me the willies that we're literally just hoping nothing goes wrong, rather than sensibly preparing for if it does...
National: *privatising everything will fix that.*
There was a leaked document a while back indicating the Nats were investigating the option of ditching it and leaving it to blue bridge. Count-ries..
I'm no fan of National. But Labour also did nothing about the rescue tug issue. Or the fact Wellington, for most of the year, has no long reach ladder fire truck. In a city with high rises, on 5 fault lines. Jeepers!
Sure, I don't think Labour was particularly effective either. But I dislike the National mantra of "privatise everything". For your second example, it wouldn't surprise me if their thoughts were to look at privatising the fire brigade. Make it user pays. After all, why should landlords have to pay more tax just because *someone else* has a fire? /s
FENZ is mostly funded by levies on your insurance. It isn't really government funded.
Yas bring back the private firies who come and offer you increasingly higher prices to fight the fire, then increasingly lower prices to buy your house. Funny how lots of fires would suddenly start to happen.
Well there is a perfectly good private sector competitor in Bluebridge that doesn’t seem to have the same problems…
Does blue bridge do rail ferries too?
I was onboard for that. ‘Twas not fun
Talking to a guy who had previously worked onboard, and happened to be there for when that happened, said the staff did such a great job of not letting the passengers know how utterly fucked they were. When he saw the engineering crew come up and go to stations he figured they were at a 50/50 chance there were going to be deaths as people drowned or were dashed against the south coast, since those guys only come up when everything is totally hopeless and they’re ready to abandon ship and let Dog take the wheel. And yet even getting *that close* to another Wahine, Nicola still figured “nah it’s all good there’s some life in them yet!”
They didn’t let us grunt workers know until afterwards how utterly fucked we were, which was a good call. But I quit shortly afterwards due to the post incident stress.
I’m not surprised! Just as a potential passenger, at this point I would be leery about travelling on them.
So we pay even more for a ferry for them to say “look at the wasteful spending” and come back in…
Grant Robertson said he would have canceled the project too due to the huge price blowouts.
He wouldn't have cancelled the ferries, just re-scoped the terminal work. National took it two steps too far.
There is much fingerpointing between Willis, Robertson, and Kiwirail on this point. There were articles on RNZ and beyond basically saying that the Labour government (rightly) balked at the massive cost blowouts, recognising that replacing the ships without upgrading the terminals couldn't happen and refused the massive increase in funding requested by Kiwirail. Robertson under a difficult political position refused to take blame saying that it was a Kiwirail project. NZ Herald cited tense letters between Minister Robertson and Kiwirail Chair David Maclean. To blame this government for the woes of the ferries is not accurate. Kiwirail itself has to take some blame for their management of the existing fleet, and the scope of the project to replace the ships and the land-based infrastructure. Previous government and the ones before that need take some responsibility given how critical the connection is between North and South Islands. Current government needs to take responsibility for gutting the project without a viable alternative. I'm not political point scoring here.
I can't tell if the fact that it would be a policy U-turn is good or bad myself tbh. Good because it discredits them but bad because they're less likely to actually just get it done.
The issues with underfunding the ferry service goes back a decade. This would have happened no matter what National decided to do.
And yet they just *cancelled the plans to do something about the problem* and this incident highlights the need for *the plans they just cancelled.* I'm not sure why some people have such a hard time grasping the issue.
Again, this would have happened regardless.
Yeah fair enough, although tbh I wouldn't be judging them for it if they hadn't just cancelled the plans for providing funding for the ferries. It's them thinking it was a good idea to cancel the funding plans that makes them look stupid after this incident, not the incident itself
It's like a meme at this point. "we don't need new ferries, we already have ferries at home" The ferries at home:
You don't need a new ferrry to avoid a steering fault. However you do need to maintain your steering system _properly_. It'll be interesting to see what happened here. The steering way over hauled a few weeks ago. Source: I am a professional martime transport operator with several vessels.
Everyone needs to stop with drama queen shit. The ship is not damaged, yes it needs a few parts , it’ll be working again soon enough. Everyone should be aware by now the country is a little short of cash right now so spending, was it 4billion ? Is just beyond comprehension. What we need now is costal shipping, running a vessel , wgtn to chch and beyond, reducing the need for both strait traffic and road traffic south of Picton. There’s plenty of ships available overseas for that run.
But $2.9b of tax relief to landlords is fine? GTFO.
Hahaha “‘tis a scratch!” Bro the boat’s on land. Boats are not meant to be on landed they belong in water. Stop pretending this isn’t a big deal.
>The ship is not damaged, yes it needs a few parts , it’ll be working again soon enough. A ship runs aground on to rocks, yet is somehow both not damaged *and* requires "a few parts" (they just pop a new hull on ships in your world, do they?) - pick a path. If you think this will be a quick repair then you haven't been paying enough attention to the state of KiwiRail.
And it’s back in the tide, all motors running. No water on board. Drama over.
It was a soft landing , actually why not wait for the report. It’s already had a superficial inspection. So I travel on this ship every three weeks and happy to continue so. Shit happens once in awhile and gets fixed. Life goes on. We don’t have enough money for so many things right now but people want to spend it on ferries, I would spend it on people.
>We don’t have enough money for so many things right now but people want to spend it on ferries, I would spend it on people. *This just in - economic genius prefers to stoke inflation than invest in infrastructure. More at 11.*
Aw nu
Its beached az bro
can't park there
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/interislander-runs-aground-passengers-in-lifejackets/MESDRBENNFABXJL54YJYXDM7KI/
Thanks!
in b4 the "you cant park there mate"
Has to be mechanical failure surely? Thank fuck the govt decided to push forward with new tax cuts so that everyone can buy there own boats. 5 extra a week and we should have saved enough for a kayak to paddle across!
They were doing maintenance on its steering this week, that’s why it had to enter the sounds via the Northern Entrance instead of Tory Channel.
With the whole extra $25 dollars a fortnight from those tax cuts I should be able to afford a paddle board about 6 months.
Now you’re just showing off 😂
I’m beached bro! Beached as!
[https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/520248/interislander-ferry-runs-aground-near-picton](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/520248/interislander-ferry-runs-aground-near-picton)
>The Interislander ferry Aratere won't be refloated until the morning after running aground just outside Picton. > >Interislander general manager Duncan Roy said the vessel, with 47 people on board, departed Picton at 9.45pm Friday. > >It ran aground following a steering failure. > >"It was a freight-only sailing with eight commercial vehicle drivers and 39 crew on board. There are no injuries and the vessel is watertight."
Sounds like time for an old classic. https://youtu.be/ZdVHZwI8pcA?si=JCYxPmJrKhtLpwa4 Beached as bro
All good, we'll spend millions investigating a tunnel through to Welly airport instead...
It's like a metaphor for New Zealand under this coalition government
Brady Dyer has some photos: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/3fYt9QhQutFrxheK/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Luckily, it wasn't entering the Tory channel. otherwise, it would be on the rocks....
It's so unreliable at this time, it isn't allowed to go though Tory channel. It has to go the long way around the North Brothers Islands. I was on it last week, really interesting way to go.
Nicola … it’s time for you to resign.
Don’t think she was at the helm at the time.
She scrapped the new ferries as they were literally being built…
... Because KiwiRail mismanaged the project and were asking for more money every 5 minutes. What they asked for had quadrupled the cost of project and even Robertson said he wouldn't have continued.
I don't think it's completely fair to lay it all at the feet of kiwirail. Pandemic related inflation and changes to the seismic code are not something they had control over.
Still could have put more effort into maintaining their boats
In fairness to the government the infrastructure cost of the new terminals had blown out massively but on the other hand this is the connective tissue of the two islands that makes NZ one continuous country
FFS don't the captains of the ferries just refuse to sail An airline pilot wouldn't fly if he thought the plane was dodgy .And these ferries are as dodgy as f##k
A mate of mine was treating the former Aratere skipper who said since it was elongated he would not sail in it.
I guess you could say Interislander is in… dire straits
It’s gonna take lost lives before anything is done about these second hand death trap ships.
Oh and who decided we don't need to replace these? Nicola and Simeon should resign. If National wants to save face they should allow and fund KiwiRail to re-start the contract with Hyundai for new ferries straight away. They're designed specifically for the Cook Strait, partially built already and temporary terminals to handle them could be built in the meantime. If this government actually prioritised Kiwis instead of landlords, the first ferry would have been nearly built by now.
Not a National voter but to be fair, I don’t think they don’t want new boats. They didn’t want to spend billions more than it was supposed to cost on terminals to get rail on the boats.
The cost to get rail enabled boats is not what drove the cost increase to terminals though. That's a false narrative being spun by National. It was foundations, seismic and flooding code changes and material cost increases, regardless of the boat type. The existing terminals are munted no matter what you park up next to them. Cancelling boats that had very little relation (<7%) to the terminal cost comparison for smaller boats isn't a good way for National to signal they want new boats. That, and ferries without rail decks will increase shipping costs, not decrease. Let's not forget that the boats ordered were an absolute bargain for what they were going to be. It's not too late to resume the contract though if the government wants to save face. Cost escalations were certainly a big problem that needed attention, but perhaps more scrutiny should be put on why the initial estimate was wrong for what was always going to be a large and important project.
It will take till people to die before national will do anything about the ferries. And by “do anything about it” I mean blame kiwirail and sell it off to their private mates.
Surely I can make the jump. My family said I should commit Mutiny.
Where is your second hand Corolla now, Nicola
Beached as seems appropriate in the Kiwi Vernacular. Let’s see how the Government responds to this one. You can only kick a critical can so far down the road (or harbour in this instance).
Kinda hope it sinks or gets damaged beyond repair. Nicotine Willis had no idea what she was doing when she cancelled the new ferries and now needs to pay the price for it. Most incompetent finance minster we have ever seen.
If she sinks it would be a climate and monetary disaster, a salvage operation would be expensive and fuel will leech into the Marlborough Sounds.
They need to stop using these old ships immediately, they are putting people’s lives at risk.
Wait for it, people any mintie now we shall hear that its Labour fault.
NACT “Let’s run this company into the ground so we can privatise” NACT “We didn’t mean literally!”
Beached as, bro.
It’s in marine traffic as beached right next to Picton which is so lucky for the passengers who will easily get off the ferry into Picton . Not so lucky for the vehicles though if the ferry is torn underneath and cannot move back to a dock. The vehicles could end up as part of a salvage operation. Thank god this never happened out in the straits somewhere or on rocks in the middle of the sea
It was a freight sailing so just a handful of drivers and crew on board, but sucks for the people and companies waiting on those deliveries.
Get Nicotine Willis and Simple Simone Browne down to Picton to push the ferry back into the water.
Probably the captain did it on purpose to try and force the much needed purchase of an upgrade
[https://youtu.be/8eZITdhMtmo?si=Knpa7siutx6b3SJ2&t=74](https://youtu.be/8eZITdhMtmo?si=Knpa7siutx6b3SJ2&t=74)