Not any more. The replacement ships (a) will now arrive at an unknown time but not before 2029 (b) will cost an as yet unknown amount (c) have as yet unknown capacities. That’s before you get to (d) the unknown opportunity cost of the entirely avoidable three year delay in fixing the ferries, which will mean more trucks on the nation’s roads, more harmful emissions, more epic delays, more frustrating breakdowns, and waning public confidence in the ferries service as a whole. Way to go, Nicola!
All we were told today is that the new ships would be smaller and cheaper, even though (e) Willis does not yet know how much taxpayers will have to pay the South Korean shipyard in compensation for cancelling the iRex order.
So …here we are, one year on from the iRex cancellation and all that the government has done – publicly – is announce that it plans to set up a committee to report back by the end of March 2025 on the possible range of options. (What on earth has the government been doing for the past 12 months?)
This process will apparently include canvassing the private sector for any ideas it might have. Really. One basic question, asked by Richard Harman was: will the new ferries be “rail enabled”- ie. will they have a rail-friendly ‘roll on, roll off” capacity, and would it amount to a broken promise if they don’t? Incredibly, Peters described this basic entirely relevant query as a “gotcha” question and so brushed it aside, unanswered.
Imagine the furore from National if Labour had made a similarly momentous decision and then – a year later – unveiled little more than its intention to set up a committee to consider future options. What is clear is that the government is set on providing only a cheaper, smaller and nastier solution for the need for a safe, reliable service across our main domestic trade and tourism link.
Faked savings
The relevant code words here include “rail enabled” ferries, which have a “roll on roll off” rail capacity. This term differs from “rail compatible” ferries that require goods to be off-loaded from the train, packed onto the ship, and then re-packed back onto a train or truck at the other side of Cook Strait. Today, Willis said the new ferries will only be “rail compatible” – in the hope that most of the public will not understand the full implications of that miserable term.
Having the new ferries being merely “rail compatible” is a disaster. The subsequent double-handling of freight will add to freight costs for business and these costs will inevitably be passed onto consumers. Thanks to Willis and her fool-hardy decision, an opportunity has been lost for decades to come. The iRex ferries offered an economic cost-saving opportunity to divert more freight from trucks, and onto rail. New Zealanders have now lost this golden chance to remove more trucks from our roads.
In the process, the iRex rail-enabled ferries also promised to decrease the extent of our harmful, transport- generated emissions. Via this decision, Willis has further jeopardised this country’s ability to meet our climate change commitments.
As with other recent moves in health and banking, the government’s real priority appears to be to further privatise the transport system. A limited liability company has been set up to manage the ferries procurement, and the construction of the wharf facilities required to service them.
In reality the fixed $550 million cost for the two large, rail-enabled iRex ferries was a bargain. While he was part of the Labour-led government, Peters shared some Cabinet responsibility for the increase in costs for building the onshore facilities, which was under-estimated. Having the costs for major construction projects increase from their pre-pandemic estimates is not something that’s unique to Kiwirail.
Given the bad optics though, it is no wonder that Willis and Peters are now so desperately keen to paint the iRex deal as a “dog”, and a “mess”, and a “blowout”, and “gold- plated” and a “Ferrari” option etc etc.etc. It was none of those things. Even if one accepts the new $4 billion overall price tag for the iRex project – and one shouldn’t – the eventual price tag for its replacement will be very, very close to that figure.
Ultimately, you have to go back to the mid-1970s and the decision by Robert Muldoon to cancel the previous Labour government’s national superannuation fund to find a decision that’s as bad as this ferries decision, and as short-sighted.
Similarly, this ideologically-driven decision by Willis and her coa;ition colleagues is going to have dire consequences for generations to come. Elsewhere, governments resign after displaying incompetence of this magnitude.
Be careful of what you wish for
So the brutal Assad regime has gone, and has been replaced by a new government led by Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham (HTS). This group of Sunni Islamic extremists share a lineage and the same puritanical
Wahhabi beliefs as Al Qaeda, Islamic State, and the Taliban with only tactical differences between them. Meanwhile, Israel has used the current power vacuum in Syria to steal and occupy a large chunk of land in the Golan Heights region that the UN has previously adjudged to be part of Syria.
Simultaneously…the USA and Israel have been carrying out extensive bombing campaigns to destroy and degrade the former Assad (and now rebel-held) military assets, allegedly in order to reduce the ability of the new regime to project force beyond its borders. This is despite the fall of the Assad regime being orchestrated in various ways by the US, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, the Saudis etc. Within 24 hours of taking over in Damascus, the rebels were being bombed by their erstwhile friends.
Eventually of course, the new Syria will be re-armed by the US, or the Saudis or by Qatar, which has been funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars to HTS and its fore-runner, the Al-Nusra Front, for well over a decade. In the past 24 hours, the Russian parliament has moved to lift the terrorist designation imposed on the Taliban. If it is patient and agrees to harm only its own citizens, HTS can expect a similar blessing eventually, from the global community.
Towards that end, the current bombing campaigns by the Us and Israel are part of a cosmetic attempt to encourage their HTS proteges to pursue a more moderate set of social policies. Fat chance. Women in Syria are likely to bear the brunt of the social changes that HTS will impose, which will be similar to what women and girls have experienced under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The educational opportunities for women and freedom from the hijab that were available under the relatively secular Assad regime are simply not compatible with HTS ideology.
Like the Taliban – and somewhat unlike Islamic State – HTS has made a point of not actively exporting its doctrines, and not attacking targets located in the West. Its socio-religious aims may be the same as Islamic State, but its methods of imposing a nationwide system of sharia law are being portrayed as more gradual, and therefore, moderate. Yet some of these HTS re-assuring expressions of moderation have been regarded by some observers as p.r. spin, rather than reflective of the reality on the ground, in the territory that HTS already administers.
In the past, HTS criticised Islamic State for its readiness to carry out beheadings, public stonings, limb amputations and other extreme hudud punishments (mandated by sharia law) as a way of imposing social discipline. HTS’ own enthusiasm for establishing sharia law and an emirate have been promoted as a more gradual process, via educational indoctrination, and with the extreme hudud forms of punishment being used only as a last resort.
While HTS is commonly seen to have a nationalist focus on promoting its beliefs solely within Syria, it should be noted that the “Sham” part of its name is a colloquial term for the region that includes Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon.
The West should not be kidding itself that HTS is a significantly more “moderate” force than the Taliban, or Islamic State, for that matter. Despite its tactical criticisms of Islamic State, the Al Nusra Front praised the attacks carried out by Islamic State in the cafes and nightclubs in Paris. It has also reportedly engaged in atrocities against Syria’s Druze and Alawite communities on sectarian grounds. (More of the same here, and also here, also here. Amnesty International reported about the brutal administration of rebel-held areas in Syria here. In sum:
The organisation is believed to have used, at various times and in various places, the following tactics: car-bombs, chemical weapons, suicide-attacks, targeting of checkpoints, conventional assault of military bases, assassination of political and military figures members of the shabila [ie Assad family and miliia loyalists] targeting (destruction/killing) of pro-government media stations and personnel…
The Al Nusra Front was included among the terrorist organisations listed by New Zealand under the Terrorism Suppression Act, and the documentation (see page 151) includes one of HTS/Al Nusra’s other, less moderate-sounding names: “The Levantine Mujahideen On the Battlefields of Jihad.”
None of this is meant to exonerate the Assad regime for its own extensive and well-documented atrocities. But it helps to know more about the track record of the new rulers of Syria.
Theme for a neo-liberal dream
And here is a fine rendition of that Nicola Willis theme song: