Winston Peters – lazy hypocrite on ferries

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, July 11th, 2024 - 15 comments
Categories: Economy, nicola willis, Politics, public transport, transport, winston peters - Tags: , , ,

My ire was raised this morning when I read this pile of PR drivel from acting PM Winston Peters about Kiwirail.

“It’s happening over and over again, and we need a better response from a company, or an outfit, that’s owned by the NZ taxpayer, and it’s a critical part of our infrastructure.”

FFS: Winston is a key part of the government that bankrolls the company on our behalf. The government that has deliberately prevented timely upgrades on that critical infrastructure, and currently has absolutely no effective solution to its ageing out hardware.

If he wants to do something about this “critical part of our infrastructure” then I suggest that he should start doing his fucking job as a responsible minister of the crown (and acting Prime Minister) rather than being lazy and grandstanding for headlines.

Try holding National to account for the completely false narrative that our lazy Minster of Finance Nicola Willis engineered about cost “blowouts”.

As far as I can see Kiwirail did a good job on procurement based on a combined rail/road ferry system that they are running. That this “critical part of our infrastructure” operates in the second-most geologically unstable part of NZ is not a reason not to have it. But you have to pay to make sure that it is available even after a earthquake hits the area.

That we have a penny pinching inexperienced politician in the position of Minister of Finance who seems to mainly think like a partisan PR flack, just makes the role of the experienced previous ministers more crucial. For Winston Peters that means actually acting like an adult at the cabinet table rather than a fool chasing headlines. That is, after all, what we actually pay him for.

For a start, if Winston was actually interested in the economics of critical infrastructure, he could look at economic basis of the rail vs trucking. As near as I can figure it, currently heavy trucks are underpaying Road User Charges (RUC) by at least one order of magnitude based on the fourth power law looking at service life of roading.

Those costs are actually been massively subsidised by other lighter road users especially in paying for excessively over-engineered roads to support them, and the costs of fixing potholes that previous penny-pinching National-led governments engineered. The ruts in the left lanes of Waikato expressway for instance. Or in any rural road in dairy farming or logging regions.

15 comments on “Winston Peters – lazy hypocrite on ferries ”

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  1. Dennis Frank 1
    11 July 2024 at 12:27 pm

    RNZ news this morning had "pushed the wrong button" as the reason the ship hit the rocks. Perhaps that was in response to Winston giving the operators the hurry-up.

    KiwiRail needs to explain the reason for the Aratere running aground "right here, right now", Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters says.

    Naturally privacy law protects the person who pushed the wrong button. The system must prevent the public from discovering who did it, because the public don't matter.

    I suspect there will be ongoing resistance to explaining why the ship was on auto-pilot. I mean, if the button activated auto-pilot, the spokesperson could tell the people that. Cause and effect often get related – even a corporate spokesperson can do it. They'd probably argue that obfuscation is the traditional priority though.

    • lprent 1.1
      11 July 2024 at 12:42 pm

      Yeah I know the PR lines.

      However Winston is jumping the gun on what will be eventually be an incident analysis by Maritime NZ.

      Maritime NZ is the national regulatory, compliance and response agency for the safety, security and environmental protection of coastal and inland waterways.

      He is completely relying on hearsay about an internal report and jerking off on it for purely for PR effect. Probably being supplied with rumours by self-interested parties (ie PR flacks) who are using it and him for their own usage.

      In effect we have a PM trying to distort the eventual report. He needs to be rapped on the knuckles for it – it is effectively the same as getting his sticky fingers plastered all over the judicial processes.

      Meanwhile he has been completely absent on this "critical part of our infrastructure" since the election.

      Makes me wonder if he is getting too old to be a working minister when he makes stupid mistakes like this.

      • Dennis Frank 1.1.1
        11 July 2024 at 1:35 pm

        Your reasoning seems sound. Bomber prefers the emotive style:

        So why the fuck are we listening to Winston allege the grounding of the Aaratere occurred because someone went off for a coffee, an allegation that has already been claimed is false?

        While we are asking that, why the fuck was the training so pathetic on the Aratere that people weren’t aware of how to switch off the autopilot?

        While we are asking that, why the Christ is Winston Peters as the Acting Prime Minister, getting involved in an inquiry about Ferry safety making allegations that are half false??? https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/07/11/should-we-listen-to-winston-over-aratere-ask-harry-tam/

        What the fuck is going on here??? Allowing the Acting Prime Minister to insert themselves into a safety inquiry, half of which turns out to be false, this is how Banana Republics behave, this is not how a liberal progressive democracy should behave! Can someone tell the Acting Prime Minister to shut the fuck up, stop spreading falsehoods and allow the investigation to occur without Winston interfering???

        I commend his restraint in not using 4 question marks in a row. Meanwhile, although RNZ hasn't yet compiled it's report online, Stuff provides this:

        Documents sent to staff last week and leaked to the media confirm the ship's autopilot was involved, but said nothing about an inattentive staff member taking a coffee break… as the vessel passed Mabel Island – which is a short way out of the berth – the team switched from hand steering onto autopilot," the document said.

        It appeared from that point, a crew member had inadvertently hit an execute button, causing the vessel to alter its course in a way it would do around about one nautical mile further along. As this happened early and steered it towards the shore. The crew after that point struggled to return it to manual steering mode, and it took around about a minute before the crew was able to apply reverse thrust and have control of the steering – at which point it was too late. Peters said the party had sources on the boat itself, which relayed the 'coffee break' claim. https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350339276/winston-peters-alleges-cover-over-interislander-crash

        Looks like management will retreat into denial about the coffee break, and hope crew can be coerced into silence about that. Why they couldn't easily switch from auto to manual control is the interesting bit. The random button-pushing is also interesting – perhaps that crew member was a casino patron?

        • lprent 1.1.1.1
          11 July 2024 at 2:00 pm

          For once bomber and myself are in agreement (about Winston getting involved).

          As a programmer, I'd be extremely surprised if a auto-pilot on a large vessel didn't run with a accurate maritime map and a GPS and anti-collision warnings. Bearing in mind that I was writing code that made pleasure craft capable of doing that more than 12 years ago.

          (I didn't implement that particular functionality only because it was a anti-collision system for other craft and the free maps for coastlines were not accurate enough – they would give false positives and false negatives. We only used the free maps to indicate rough coast lines.)

          The most notable phrase in your quote was "The crew after that point struggled to return it to manual steering mode…". That reads to me as something more like a software or hardware glitch. In particular it reads some kind of software lockup.

          But in any case, it also sounds like Winston or someone with the technical brains of mickey mouse shouldn't be trying to second-guess what actually happened based on what appears to be hearsay from someone with the technical abilities of a PR brown-noser.

          • KJT 1.1.1.1.1
            13 July 2024 at 7:48 am

            So much bullshit is flying around from the ignorant, that i'm reserving comment until I hear from people that actually were there.

            You will note that Master mariners, have been conspicuous by their absence in the "chatter" !

            We know that accidents/incidents rarely have one simple cause, and will wait for the investigations. Even then you have to "read between the lines". I've seen too many investigations that sieze on an immediate, seemingly obvious cause, ignoring underlaying factors. In some political pressure has been obvious. The preference is always to "blame the crew" because companies have insurance against crew fault. The rigorous, "no fault" reporting and investigations we see in aircraft incidents, aimed at preventing re-occurance, are sadly lacking in the maritime industry.

            Ergonomic design of control systems is also lacking. They tend to be a hodgepodge of systems from different makers. The cheapest the ship builder can source, that meets minimum requirements. Systems that "play nicely together" are rare.

            Note: Autopilots on large vessels can be overridden by NFU controls at several points on the bridge, instantly! This is a requirement.

            All those leaping to conclusions are unlikely to be correct.

  2. Janice 2
    11 July 2024 at 5:39 pm

    Hasn't Peters got form about ferry groundings? I have tried to look it up but all I can get is his latest ranting. (12 pages of it) From memory he claimed in Parliament that a ferry had scraped the bottom approaching the sounds. I pretty sure it was disproved.

    • Anne 2.1
      11 July 2024 at 6:48 pm

      Are you referring to this story? The incident occurred in 1986. The Russian Cruise liner sank somewhere in the vicinity of the Cook Strait. If I remember correctly Winston claimed it had been deliberately scuttled or some such tale. It was rubbish. The NZ pilot made a bad error of judgement and let the Master of the ship take it through a narrow, rocky passage.

      What with the Trades Hall bombing in 1984, the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985 and the sinking of a very large Russian ship in the Cook Strait in1986, the first term of the Lange government was filled with high drama.

  3. Mike the Lefty 3
    11 July 2024 at 6:53 pm

    I recall a similar incident of Peters scuppering a ferry grounding inquiry way back in the term of the Rogernome government, but he was in opposition then. To try and scupper a proper inquiry when you are the deputy PM is a bit strange.

    • Anne 3.1
      11 July 2024 at 7:32 pm

      Seymour has been getting all the publicity with his doomsday predictions. Peters is after some of the action.

      Why in God's name do the MSM give them so much air-time while almost totally ignoring some good rebuttals of this government's behaviour coming from Labour's shadow ministers. I've seen some really good stuff but apart from Willie Jackson the MSM are pretty much ignoring them.

      What an incredibly fickle bunch they are.

      • Kat 3.1.1
        11 July 2024 at 9:07 pm

        They, the MSM, are getting whittled down though……..

      • Mike the Lefty 3.1.2
        12 July 2024 at 8:49 am

        I can see where its all leading.

        The negative rhetoric is pointing towards having the interlanders either being sold off at a bargain basement price or (more likely) being scrapped completely on the pretext that they are too old and hard to steer in narrow channels.

        Either way, the CoC has already made up their minds on the matter and they are just looking for excuses to do it.

        Better to save the money for the new highways, by-passes and flyovers that National has got planned for the rest of the country, you know.

  4. Jack 4
    12 July 2024 at 6:04 am

    Nothing like a half-baked story to endear Winston to his supporters.

    [Please correct your user name, thanks – Incognito]

  5. benby 5
    12 July 2024 at 8:23 pm

    IMHO the point of it all is to kill rail, at least for freight. Because this fascist corrupt government is corrupted by the trucking industry. That's all really, I think. A billion is chump change, if this is the goal.

  6. ghostwhowalksnz 6
    13 July 2024 at 3:16 pm

    hearsay Internal report ?

    its an actual memo reproduced in Evening post from Interislander Safety and health executive Committee

    https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350338224/leaked-internal-safety-bulletin-shows-aratere-crew-couldnt-turn-autopilot/?utm_source=stuff_article&utm_medium=referral

    Cook Strait ferry mistakenly sent on beach crash course

    Tom Hunt

    Tom Hunt

    July 10, 2024

    Share

    Play Video

    The Aratere ferry limps back to Picton

    VIDEO CREDIT: MATTHEW HAMPSON

    One mistakenly pressed button sent the 17,816-tonne Aratere ferry off-course – but crew on the bridge couldn’t wrestle back control from autopilot before running aground was inevitable, a leaked internal safety bulletin shows.

    It is understood that a key part of the investigation into the Interislander ferry’s grounding in the Marlborough Sounds on June 21 will be whether the bridge crew knew how to disengage the autopilot when using a recently-installed steering system.

    An internal Interislander safety bulletin was sent to masters and deck officers on July 5 showing that as the ferry passed Mabel Island, off Picton, autopilot was engaged.

    21599B72B5BE42F891B07D98B5F3BB55