Peters: RMTU Annual Delegates Conference
new-zealand-first-party
Tue Oct 23 2012 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Peters: RMTU Annual Delegates Conference
Tuesday, 23 October 2012, 2:50 pm
Speech: New Zealand First Party
Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
23 October 2012
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Speech: RMTU Annual Delegates Conference Wellington 2012
NZ Police College, Aotea Lagoon, Porirua
Tuesday 23 October 2012, 1pm
Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this important event.
Today we want to reflect on how New Zealand First sees rail, and outline our vision for the future of rail infrastructure.
As you are well aware, over the past year rail has been making the news.
Mostly for all the wrong reasons.
What we have been seeing is the erosion of a key transport infrastructure asset.
• Mass redundancies
• Closure of the Napier – Gisborne line
• Daft procurement decisions such as Chinese freight wagons and imported pest infested sleepers
Cutting maintenance and engineering staff is deeply damaging to the future of rail infrastructure.
Such cuts will also impact many communities throughout the country.
What we will see is something that has been repeated over and over again – rail staff going elsewhere with valuable specialist rail skills.
Many will join the exodus of skilled people, and with their families join our other economic refugees over the ditch.
Others may have to take what work they can – perhaps with a contracting firm at a lower wage.
We are also seeing asset write downs – with over $1.4 billion written off the value of the rail system – be warned - this is a classic prelude to privatisation.
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What does it all add up to?
A concerted attack on rail.
Because the blunt fact is National have an ideological hang up on rail.
They do not grasp the importance of rail in the overall transport picture.
John Key is eager to go to Hollywood to trade away the rights of New Zealand workers.
He will not go to Hillside to explain why he is strangling rail.
But in New Zealand First, railway has a defender.
Since returning to Parliament New Zealand First has fostered a strong working relationship with rail staff and the RMTU.
By collaborating with rail employees we have been able to expose to the country what is really going on.
And the lasting impact and consequences that cut backs will have.
With your assistance, we have seized opportunities to place job cuts, outsourcing, and issues around rail safety in the full glare of public light.
In the modern era rail has played a critical role in the national transport infrastructure.
From New Zealand’s earliest days this was recognised by people of vision and drive.
In the ten years from 1870, Julius Vogel launched a huge initiative for rail to be managed under central government and to invest in a comprehensive rail network which connected the country.
Vogel, and many of those after him, knew that a viable rail network was crucial for the development of our provincial centres.
It was then, and continues to be now.
Successive governments throughout the history of New Zealand looked after our rail infrastructure until the arrival of Labour back in office in 1984.
They had won the election for many reasons, one of which was the massive ‘Save Rail’ campaign they ran with the railway workers union.
Remember, they hired a carriage at the back of a train and Richard Prebble travelled all around New Zealand saying how he was going to save rail.
You’ll also remember how he got in and set out to slash investment in railways.
Then in 20 July 1993 the National Party topped that by selling NZ Rail for a pittance, at enormous commercial gain for Fay Richwhite and Wisconsin Central Railroad.
The whole sale process was a fraud on the people of New Zealand.
The sale never went to tender, it involved people who were insiders in that they had got themselves made the ‘financial advisors’ to NZ Rail the year before.
And worst still, some of you will remember that leading personalities in the railway union supported the sale on the basis that there was $200 million of investment required and only private entities could provide it.
So NZ Rail had been substantially restructured before 1992 in which year Booze Allen forecast that railways would make $36 million in 1993 and $100 million plus per annum in the following years. After thousands of staff, mainly men, had lost their jobs the National Party sold it to its new (and Labour’s old) mates, Fay Richwhite.
National said that the sale price was $400 million.
That of course was false because $72 million of debt had to be paid off and the purchase therefore was for $328 million.
When the international market learned over the next few weeks of the sale, Fay Richwhite and Wisconsin Central Railroad share values went up in excess of $188 million.
Eventually the share price in NZ Rail went well beyond a heady $9, but when the whole sham of capitalization and exploitation was over, the shares had fallen at their very lowest to 28 cents.
Over the years this saw our rail infrastructure run into the ground.
Even Vogel warned of the calamity arising from the privatisation of the rail network.
He foretold that a future government would be tempted to privatise the industry, much to the country’s detriment.
In 1881, in the Taranaki Herald, one of Vogel’s letters is recounted to the public.
It states:
“The Government which divested the Colony of the contingent profits derivable from keeping the railways for the benefit of the State would deserve to be hanged.”
We need more people like Vogel!
New Zealand First supported the buy-back of the rail network in 2008.
With one difference.
We’d have jumped in on the buy back at the very lowest end of the share price.
But at least the buy-back showed a return to the traditional approach to the rail industry in New Zealand.
It is sad to see that in the space of a few years, what could have been – should have been – heralded as a great return to a nationalised rail network has been subverted by the Turnaround Plan introduced in 2010.
Under this plan, KiwiRail is expected to perform along similar lines as any other private business, effectively supporting itself, its maintenance and operations.
This plan is more turn back than turn around!
Rail has multiple roles.
The current thinking of Government and rail management is that the rail network is really only about freight.
Clearly, serving commodities, exports and trade is the main role of rail but there is much more.
A comprehensive rail network is about connecting the country.
• Keeping the country whole.
• Holding it together.
• Fostering a sense of community and common identity.
Last month KiwiRail closed the Napier – Gisborne rail line.
The Government said there was no economic sense in repairing it.
That is a very dubious and unsubstantiated claim.
We have not seen a comprehensive cost benefit analysis of all the costs that should be included such as extra roading maintenance costs when the line is closed.
In that announcement they cast adrift an export based region and community, condemning them to isolation.
New Zealand First considers that there is a great future for rail in New Zealand but it is going to take a radical shift in thinking – and the current Government is incapable of that.
We need the sort of bold vision that Vogel exemplified.
In our future for rail we would do three fundamental things.
1. Protect the existing assets
We would not abandon the Napier Gisborne line – or any other line - for a handful of dollars as the National party is doing.
When you factor in the additional roading costs there will be no net savings.
2. Invest in rail
When it makes good economic sense to support rail - then we would make that investment.
One of the biggest challenges facing New Zealand over the next 20 years will be around urban development and reducing the concentration of businesses and human capital away from Auckland. Statistics show that the country will become overly “top heavy” with everything being concentrated in that region.
It’s imperative that we sustain an efficient rail network to give the rest of the country an appropriate level of rail connectivity.
3. Put the nation’s interest first
One of the areas where we are in stark contrast to this Government is that we put the nation’s interests first.
So where railways workshops can do the job, they will get the job.
It is outrageous that for railway work, we would put Chinese workers ahead of Kiwis who can do the work – and make a better job of it.
Rail has in the past made a great contribution to the New Zealand economy.
With the right support and investment it could make an even greater contribution.
And New Zealand First backs that.
ENDS
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