Posts Tagged ‘railways’

The Gisborne rail line

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, April 25th, 2012 - 42 comments

Zetetic’s recent post on the Gisborne rail line generated a lot of comment.  A week later a final comment was added – it deserves a wider audience…

Save the Gisborne rail line

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, April 16th, 2012 - 122 comments

Looks like the Nats are going to use the bridge washout on the Gisborne-Napier rail line as an excuse to close it. Despite wagon volumes growing 12-fold this year. A massive piece of capital, mothballed for want of $4.3m. More has been spent so far clearing a slip from the nearby Waioeka Gorge road, no questions asked. The Nats’ anti-rail agenda = more trucks tearing up our roads and more oil imports.

Nats’ ad claims credit for Lab’s infrastructure

Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, November 1st, 2011 - 51 comments

Oh dear. This is not what National needed on the back of Goff besting Key in the first debate. National’s new TV ad is on the world-class infrastructure they claim to have built. But it was all planned, funded, and mostly built by Labour. Have National accidentally revealed their real achievement: taking credit for others work?

So much for ‘ambitious for New Zealand’

Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, May 3rd, 2010 - 161 comments

A new report says that building the half a billion worth of new rail rolling stock for Auckland in New Zealand would boost GDP by $250 million, improve our current account deficit by over $100 million, add $70 million to government revenue, and create 1200 skilled jobs. But the Government just want the cheapest price for the rail cars, and that means going overseas.

Taumarunui no longer on Main-trunk line, had Key had his way

Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, July 3rd, 2008 - 78 comments

A day into the renewed public ownership of our railway system and it has emerged that not only did John Key help sell it in the first time and make a profit off the asset-stripping that followed. Further, his party’s policy of keeping the rail in private hands would have seen nearly all the network […]

Asking the second question

Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, May 24th, 2008 - 62 comments

Key’s best trick is to answer questions with impressive or technical sounding assertions that stop the line of questioning but don’t actually tell us anything. When he does that, interviewers need to push him to explain himself. Here’s a few paraphrased examples from the last couple of week: Q. ‘What don’t you like about the […]

It’s alright when he does it

Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, May 7th, 2008 - 64 comments

A reader sent us this letter to the Herald’s editor, which the Herald has refused to print. When the government moved to block the sale of Auckland Airport to the Canadian Pension Fund, the Herald’s editorial proclaimed that anyone who didn’t want foreign ownership of our strategic assets was xenophobic. Yesterday, John Key played the […]

The 40 cent tax cut

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, May 6th, 2008 - 17 comments

National and some of the more wacky commentators are complaining that the $655 million used by the Government to buy back the rail stock should have been used, instead, to fund tax cuts. Now, there’s a crucial difference between a tax cut and a one-off capital purchase. And it’s that you only pay once for […]

Fran O’Shillivan strikes again

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, May 6th, 2008 - 84 comments

Here’s the first par of National’s release on the rail deal: National Party Leader John Key says at a time when householders are struggling to pay the weekly bills, Helen Clark’s decision to spend the thick end of a billion dollars to buy back the rail rolling stock does not make any sense. Here’s Fran […]

For whom the Toll bells

Written By: - Date published: 10:26 am, May 5th, 2008 - 62 comments

The Government has bought back the rail stock and ferries from Toll for $655 million. The privatisation of these vital assets, which are also natural monopolies, by National was a disaster from Day 1. National flogged the railways and the ferries off dirt cheap to their mates who asset-stripped them by slashing maintenance and taking […]

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