Brown SimeonHon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Transport): Well thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to respond in this debate. As is well-known on Friday 21 June the Aratere ran aground at 9.56 p.m. just outside of Picton with a total of 47 aboard: 39 crew and eight passengers. It is a relief to everyone that there was no one injured during this incident and as it was a freight sailing the usual travelling public were not aboard and not impacted by this event. I also want to acknowledge the swift action from the emergency response agencies to ensure that those aboard were safe and the actions which led to the successful refloating of the vessel late on the evening of 22 June the following day.The operation to refloat Aratere on Saturday night was successful and the vessel is now berthed in Picton. Now the ship has been safely refloated investigations can begin into the incident and how KiwiRail can ensure that this does not happen again. There are three investigations under way at this stage. KiwiRail is undertaking its own internal investigation. Maritime New Zealand as the regulator is undertaking an investigation. This investigation may result in administrative action or prosecution in regard to the issues. The Transport Accident Investigation Commission will also be undertaking an independent safety investigation. This investigation will determine the circumstances and causes of accidents and incidents with a view of avoiding similar occurrences in the future rather than to ascribe blame to any person.The debate that has been from the other side of the House is trying to put this perspective forward—that the incident that took place on Friday night would have all been fixed if iReX hadn't been cancelled. Well that is quite frankly completely untrue—completely untrue—and the point that they're trying to make is completely untrue. The reality is this is an issue that KiwiRail as the owners and operators of those ferries must take responsibility for. They are responsible for the maintenance of their ferries and the reality is over the last number of years when the last Government was in charge there was so much focus on the big shiny new ferries they lost sight of the focus on actually maintaining what they already had—they lost sight on what they already had. So the focus was on the new thing—the new berths the new flashy big ferries which the last Government signed up to and the billions of dollars they were planning to spend—and they lost sight of the fact that their number one job is to keep New Zealanders safe going across the Cook Strait on those ferries. We've seen incident after incident in that regard and where the safety of New Zealanders has been put at risk by KiwiRail and by Interislander when that is their number one job.Unfortunately on Friday night the latest incident took place in relation to what we saw on the Cook Strait. As the member said earlier we are grateful that it took place in the circumstances that it did and that no one's life was lost. But what this highlights and what the shareholding Ministers for the State-owned enterprise KiwiRail have made very very clear is that this Government's expectation of KiwiRail is that the maintenance and the resilience and the safety of their existing ferries must be the number one priority for the board of KiwiRail—that must be the number one priority for the board of KiwiRail. So those expectations have been made abundantly clear by the shareholding Ministers—the Hon Paul Goldsmith and the Hon Nicola Willis—to KiwiRail in terms of their expectations and the concerns that they have made has led to action being taken by KiwiRail in relation to the maintenance of those ferries. But the reality is not enough has been done. There has been work done by KiwiRail in relation to getting independent ferry safety experts in to actually ensure that they are undertaking full safety operations of those ferries but there is more work that needs to be done. The reality is that regardless of the iReX decision these ferries have to run for at least another two years and so that work is critically critically important.When I was in Picton on Saturday we discussed these issues and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission made this point which I think is a very important point. They made the point in the meeting that there are a large number of ships of this age which operate around the world and which operate safely. So that is the point that needs to be debated here today. It is the need for KiwiRail and Interislander to ensure the safety and operation of those services. But the reality is that this does also raise questions in relation to the future. The member opposite—Tangi Utikere—tried to make the point that Well the ferries were only going to cost $550 million." Well the iReX project was blown out to over $3 billion. The reality is that when it started the project was worth $750 million. Now that sounds perfectly reasonable. The analogy you could use is buying a house and land package and you've signed the contract for $750000. Well you come back five years later and whilst the house is still only worth $550000 the land's gone up to $2.25 million and suddenly it's worth $3 million. No one would continue to be signed up with that type of deal but that is exactly what the last Government let happen. The landside port-side infrastructure went from being around $200 million to being over $2.2 billion as part of that particular project.I have a letter here which the former finance Minister Hon Grant Robertson sent to KiwiRail on 19 September 2023 saying "We note that KiwiRail under-scoped the landside infrastructure in 2021 meaning the decision to procure two large rail-enabled ships at the time was premature. To date we are yet to see a satisfactory explanation for why this was the case." So—Dana Kirkpatrick: Who was the Government? Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government at the time was the Labour Government. It was making the point which we were then shown when we became Government which is that the cost of the landside infrastructure which was being foisted on to the Crown was being driven because of the fact that it was under-scoped due to the size of the ferries and also due to the fact that they were rail-enabled leading to significant cost escalations on the port-side infrastructure. Tough decisions did have to be made when we came into Government. In fact the time line that was released by the Minister of Finance when the decision was made showed that between early November 2023—before the Government had been formed but we were briefed during the negotiation phase. The incoming Government was informed of the most recent cost escalation in early November 2023 and that it would be $2.6 billion. When we became Government we were advised it was $3 billion. In less than a month the cost had blown out by over $400 million—over $400 million. It would be frankly irresponsible to have continued with that project.This Government is committed to having a safe and resilient Cook Strait. We are committed to new ferries. The Minister of Finance and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises have a ministerial advisory group which has just as of last week provided a report with further advice on how we can assure the safety and resilience of the Cook Strait. There are options that will be considered. Decisions will be made in an affordable and cost-effective manner to ensure the resilience of this critically important part of our supply chain.Those are decisions which we will make in the appropriate time to make sure that we make those appropriate decisions and we won't make the mistakes the last Government made where they let this project go from being $750 million to over $3 billion and counting and they refuse to take responsibility and accountability over those things. We will make the tough decisions on this side of the House and we will ensure the resilience of the Cook Strait. Thank you very much."