Barbara Edmonds says Nicola Willis should resign as union warns ferry costs could hit $1b

The Interislander Cook Strait ferry Kaiarahi arriving in Wellington Harbour. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Labour’s finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds said Finance Minister Nicola Willis should resign if break fees associated with cancelling or renegotiating the build of new Interislander ferries are as high as the $500 million one union has estimated.

“She totally should,” Edmonds said, when asked if Willis should resign if break costs went that high.

“It was a reckless decision that she made with no plan. It was short-sighted.

“She [Willis] basically hangs her hat on being a prudent financial manager. It is a decision that she made early on in her career. It is quite clear she that hasn’t taken advice from it.

“The break fees, if they are in fact up to $800m or $1 billion dollars as is being reported by the media and through the union [then] I think it is a serious decision that someone needs to look at,” Edmonds said, complaining the Government had yet to release documents relating to ferry cancellation costs.

The break fees cited by Edmonds come from the Maritime Union of New Zealand.

The figure the union cited was $300m to $500m, about half the figure cited by Edmonds, however, the total sunk cost of the project is currently about $500m - taking the total project cost to $500m to $800m.

The union’s national secretary Carl Findlay published the figures, citing industry sources. Findlay published a press release today saying Willis had “torched a billion dollars of taxpayer’s money with nothing to show for it”.

“It’s fiscal arson,” he said.

Willis would not say whether the figures were accurate, but said Labour’s plan to replace the ferries was “fatally flawed”.

“We are confident our ultimate solution, even accounting for sunk costs of the failed Project iReX, will come at less cost to the taxpayer than the at least $3 billion price tag for Project iReX. This was a project mired with cost blow-outs, delays, and significant practical problems. It was the right decision to stop it,” Willis said.

Under Labour, the Interisland ferries were due to be replaced via iReX, which would have led to two South Korean-built mega ferries operating on the strait.

The cost of buying new ferries and building new portside infrastructure in Wellington and Picton blew out from $775m to $3b by December - the equivalent of a $1.2m blowout for every day iReX was in operation.

Willis denied additional funding for the project forcing Interislander owner KiwiRail back to the drawing board. The Government “repudiated” the original contract, noting that the mega ferries would no longer be suitable for the smaller, more affordable scale envisaged by the new Government.

The nature of this repudiation, the negotiations and costs around it, is top secret.

Business Desk reported today that Willis is refusing to release letters between ministers and KiwiRail about cancelling a $551m shipbuilding contract with a Hyundai Mipo Dockyard South Korean shipyard, citing the ongoing state of exit negotiations.

BusinessDesk earlier reported that KiwiRail wrote off $382m in costs associated with iReX and provisioned a further $60m to fully wind down the project. However, that doesn’t include the cost of exiting the contract with Hyundai.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.