A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Let us now praise sensible men! I refer to recent letter-writers who insist the rail-track is fixed before we get that literal log-jam from the forestry industry. My thanks to them.
In the Tuesday 25th Gisborne Herald, KiwiRail’s original cost estimate is quoted at $3.5 million. Later figures like $6m
and even $10m were floated around, with Napier MP Stuart Nash calling restoration “a big ask”.
Yet, over just the past couple of years, KiwiRail has budgeted close on $15m for debt-servicing when it is legal and ethical for infrastructures which benefit the environment to be funded interest-free from our sovereign Reserve Bank. After all, this time a decade ago, our RBNZ was part way through funding the reserves of the Australian-owned banks with a $5 billion (yes-billion) dollar credit line to ease them through their liquidity crisis.
This was an unconventional move but, as an RBNZ Bulletin (Vol 81/No 4) of last May states, there is nothing in the Reserve Bank Act forbidding such an action. Our Ministers of Finance, Transport and State-Owned Enterprises need to do some homework.
Heather Marion Smith
