Financial Review Debate — Ministry of Transport

If we had had more opportunity, I think we should have had a closer look at the Ministry of Transport and its Turnaround Plan for KiwiRail, because clearly the Government’s commitment to turning round KiwiRail is coming off the tracks, as we have seen in the past few days. In fact, there has been a litany of problems over the last year or so. We have seen the imported Chinese wagons. The locomotives are having to have their brakes completely replaced, and now we have asbestos in the locomotives. I will get back to that in a minute. We have seen the debacle with Peruvian sleepers, which are having to be replaced by contractors right throughout the country. I am told that some of those sleepers are still so dangerous that railway workers cannot walk on them.

We have seen the issue in the Kaimai Tunnel last year, where contractors were exposed to unnecessary and unhealthy gas risks. That was all to do with contractors and the fact that they were not carrying out their health and safety requirements. We have had the debacle with the Aratere ferry. There has just been a catalogue of problems, and I say that this goes back to the Turnaround Plan and the approach of this Government of cost cutting, of lowest-cost tendering, of contracting out, and of putting pressure on our national railway to deliver profits on freight while cutting costs everywhere else—while cutting costs everywhere else.

Here we are today, and that approach is now putting workers’ lives at risk. That is where we have ended up. We have asbestos in these locomotives. We have a rolled-over locomotive in Auckland on which work has now been stopped. The only reason that the workers did not carry on driving those locomotives was that the unions said that, no, workers were not going to put their lives on the line for this killer—killer—asbestos. The unions said they were not going to allow their workers to be exposed to that.

I understand—and I would challenge the Minister of Transport to tell me I am wrong—that there was real reluctance from KiwiRail to stop those trains, those locomotives, being used. It was proposing, actually, that they could keep driving them, that it was safe, and that they could be contained. We are talking, as I said, about a killer substance. It is amazing to me and many other people who have been across this story in the last few days that we still import asbestos into New Zealand. It is still legal to do so.

Even though the Chinese company gave commitments that there was no asbestos in the trains, the warning signs have been there for some time. Over last November the Australians found asbestos in Chinese-made locomotives. The warning sign was there. KiwiRail checked it and came back and said there was none. Well, of course there was. So I put the blame squarely on this Minister of Transport and on the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan, which he is responsible for. He has a lot of questions to answer. I want to know when he knew that there was asbestos in these locomotives. When did he find out?

I happen to know that KiwiRail found out about this last Wednesday—that is, 25 February. KiwiRail did not tell the workers until the 28th, 3 days later, and did not tell the public until Saturday. I want to know from the Minister of Transport whether he was involved in conversations with KiwiRail at that time about whether it should go public and whether it should try to persuade those workers to continue to work on those locomotives. The thing about railway workers is that their history with asbestos goes back a long, long way. They have fought this for years and years and years. So it is completely understandable that they are horrified. They are afraid of the exposure they have had.

I think the bottom line of all of this that gets to me is that this Government and the Minister made the decision with the Turnaround Plan to have these locomotives and wagons and other things made in China. We lost an entire workshop and skilled workers because of it. Here we are now, at the end of it, with workers’ lives on the line. I just find that appalling. I wish the Minister were able to get up and take a call in response to these concerns that we have. I think the thing that we want to see from the Minister and what we will be seeking—

Report noted.

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment