Prosser Richard: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9901. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to call the Minister for State Owned Enterprises to account with regard to the performance of KiwiRail. Rail is a critical part of New Zealand’s infrastructure. Some of us in this House—some no small few I would contend—will remember KiwiRail from the days when it was known as New Zealand Railways Department when it was its own Government department when sober administrations from both sides of the political divide took it seriously and afforded it the respect and the resourcing that reflected its importance to the nation and the economy. Even today the shadow of its former self that KiwiRail has become still employs some 4100 people. That number does not take into account the many people in support industries who owe their jobs to rail. But the National Government has made it clear that it does not care about the livelihoods of those people just as it does not care about rail.We can see this in a number of decisions that KiwiRail has made under the Government’s Turnaround Plan. The Minister for State Owned Enterprises Tony Ryall admitted last year that KiwiRail was unlikely to find the $3.85 billion needed from its own operating budget to finance the plan itself. This is why it has had to cut 300 jobs. This is why the Hillside railway workshops in Dunedin have been starved of work run down and hocked off while the Napier-Gisborne rail line has been mothballed. The Government has an obligation to stump up with the capital if KiwiRail is unable to fund itself. The Government simply cannot cut and run when the going gets tough—not when an essential service provider like rail is at stake. There needs to be an emphasis on regional development and jobs not simply bottom-line savings. The Government’s approach is reckless. It has no regard for the public good or social cost. This is a Government that would flog off the railways again if it could. It has an ideological disposition towards profit over people.Some of the $158 million of extra spending on tourism in Budget 2013 could have gone to financing KiwiRail instead. Bringing in ever more tourists is all well and good but we have to have ways of transporting them as well. Rail is the only sensible alternative we have to the ridiculously costly process of upgrading the Third World goat tracks that pass for State highways in this country. Some of the $158 million could have gone a long way to resolving the seemingly endless issues KiwiRail has with its Cook Strait ferries which were bought on the cheap and are riddled with problems. Last week all three of them were laid up with breakdowns at the same time—three lame ducks all in a row.That $158 million will deliver no benefit to the people of the East Coast or Northland where vital rail links are being mothballed. These are some of the most depressed regions in the country and they need all the help they can get. Even in their depressed state these regions are making a contribution to the economy to our foreign exchange earnings and that contribution needs to be recognised by the Government through investment in KiwiRail. The Napier-Gisborne line alone would have cost only $4 million to repair. The community and businesses on the East Coast have voiced support for the rail link and they say they would be able to increase the amount of freight carried on the line in the future. Why not listen to the people who would be most affected by this decision?The Turnaround Plan has also led to the compromising of public safety standards. Rotten sleepers from South America and rotten rolling stock from China—that is what this Government’s penny pinching has given us. Poor finish second-rate welding steel that if rumour is to be believed does not always even meet international standard ISO 9000 specifications and wheel gauges that are not the right size and that are flogging out the inside of the tracks themselves—it is probably only a matter of time before someone dies as a result of it. What will they say then?The decision to source locomotives and wagons from overseas has also been short-sighted in that it has cost the country hundreds of jobs and associated economic benefits. Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show that the closure of Hillside could have been avoided if only the Government had chosen to put New Zealand jobs and industry first. A difference of $6.4 million pales in comparison to the somewhere between $232 million and $250 million that Business and Economic Research says it would have added to New Zealand’s GDP. Quite apart from the inferior quality of locomotives and freight wagons imported from China’s Government-owned slave-labour sweatshops when compared with the high standard that our own engineers and tradesmen produce and the fact that the lower cost is a false saving—because these cheap nasty imports will wear out and break down and have to be replaced many years sooner than their local counterparts—no one in Government seems to have calculated the cost of not building KiwiRail’s wagons in Dunedin. There will be unemployment. There will be the loss of skilled tradespeople who will disappear to Australia never to return. There is the loss of yet more of our wealth-generating manufacturing base.KiwiRail is a shambles. It is poorly run poorly managed poorly resourced and poorly regarded by a poor Government. New Zealand First’s report on KiwiRail is not a “Must do better.”; it is a “Go back and start again.” We sincerely urge the Minister to take this lesson on board and change track accordingly. Thank you.