A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
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 $6mand 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.
