National Road Carriers Responds To KiwiRail Announcement To Retire Aratere
We welcome KiwiRails commitment to continue operating a two-ship service with Kaitaki and Kairahi, and to prioritise freight throughout the transition period.
National Road Carriers supports KiwiRail's decision to retire the Aratere and begin the port redevelopment in Picton to pave the way for New Zealand's new rail-enabled ferries arriving in 2029. This is a critical step in future-proofing our inter-island transport network.
While the retirement of the Aratere marks the end of a long-serving vessel in New Zealand's freight and customer operations, we acknowledge the careful planning KiwiRail has undertaken to manage the transition. Maintaining safe and reliable freight connections across Cook Strait is essential for our members and the customers they serve.
We welcome KiwiRail's commitment to continue operating a two-ship service with Kaitaki and Kaiārahi, and to prioritise freight throughout the transition period. The decision to enhance road-bridging capacity to carry rail freight ensures that critical freight flows between the North and South Islands will be maintained at a high standard.
The assurance that existing customers will be rebooked, and that freight continuity remains a top priority, provides our members and the broader freight industry with confidence. We also support KiwiRail's intent to consult with the freight market during this period to ensure operational arrangements are practical and effective.
Ultimately, this work lays the foundation for a stronger, more resilient transport link that will benefit freight operators, their customers, and all New Zealanders in the years ahead.
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Otago Daily Times
11 minutes ago
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'That is Fitch telling us that borrowing a lot more, as Opposition parties are proposing, would lead to a credit downgrade. 'That would increase the cost of government debt and also have a flow-on effect to the cost of household and business borrowing, as New Zealand would be seen as a more risky country to lend to,' Willis said. Labour has not released a fiscal plan, which would detail how much taxing, spending, and borrowing the party plans if it wins the next election. Hipkins has previously spoken about the need to borrow to invest in infrastructure. On Tuesday, he said, when asked by the Herald, that his party's fiscal plan would chart a path back to surplus. The Green Party has released a fiscal plan that includes $99.1 billion in additional revenue made up of about $89b in new taxation and the rest in climate taxes. The plan also includes additional borrowing for capital investment and a higher deficit in the last year of the forecast period. 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'This is vintage National Party, when they're in a hole, and they're in a very big hole at the moment, start throwing mud at the Labour Party, but the reality is their hole is getting deeper, they need to work out how to get themselves out of a hole without worrying about other political parties.' New Zealand's AA+ rating with Fitch dates back to 2022. Photo / Mark Mitchell Swarbrick hit back at Willis saying that 'when these made-up economic metrics, the likes of GDP, are superseding our focus on the wellbeing of people and planet, we've kind of lost the plot'. Swarbrick said that ratings agencies actually took a 'more sophisticated approach' in assessing the Government's finances than the Treasury. Swarbrick said, 'Luxon and Willis' decisions have seen productivity growth flatline, skilled workers deserting the country and deteriorating infrastructure placed under ever more pressure. 'Ironically, financial markets have a clearer grasp of fiscal responsibility than the Minister of Finance. They reward countries that successfully build economic resilience and punish those weakened by the chronic underinvestment favoured by Willis,' she said. Pointing to Fitch's concerns about the housing market and unemployment, Swarbrick said, 'The Government's decisions to withdraw public investment, in turn generating higher household debt and simultaneously increasing unemployment, is very bad for financial stability and debt-servicing.' New Zealand is one of just 12 countries to have a AA+ or AAA rating from Fitch. The current rating was obtained in 2022, under the last Labour Government and Finance Minister Grant Robertson. New Zealand had been downgraded to AA after the financial crisis and the Christchurch Earthquake In its commentary on that decision, and subsequent reviews, Fitch has stressed that forecasts show a 'fiscal consolidation', in which the Government runs a surplus and debt declines as a percentage of the GDP. National misses election surplus promise, Labour won't say it would have cut spending had it won election At the 2023 election, both National and Labour ran on fiscal plans that showed a surplus in 2027. National promised to reduce the amount of new spending each year by a cumulative $3.3b, meaning its 2027 surplus and subsequent surpluses were slightly larger than Labour's. Beginning in 2022, the Treasury began slashing its economic growth and tax revenue forecasts. This continued in the months after the election, when new forecasts showed the surplus shrinking, and has persisted to 2025. The result of this has been lower revenue than expected, pushing the forecast surplus out into the future. This has meant that despite Willis reducing spending growth, on balance, by far more than her fiscal plan promised in 2023, the deficit and overall borrowing levels are far higher. The Treasury reckons this year's deficit will be $15.6 billion, more than 10 times larger than the $1b deficit National promised on the campaign trial. Labour promised an even larger deficit of $1.5b. Given changes to GDP and revenue projections, that deficit would have increased too. On current forecasts, a surplus, by the traditional measure, is not forecast until the early 2030s. National and Labour are scrapping over how to fix the mess. Willis, noting the Government's large deficit, refuses to spend even more on stimulus, which some hope would speed an economic recovery, ultimately restoring the books in the process. Hipkins, on the other hand, refused to say he would have cut spending to keep to his fiscal promises, had he won the election. Willis rebuffed calls for more spending to stimulate the economy, saying that this spending would be 'the end of interest rate reductions'. 'Treasury has affirmed the best way to stimulate an economy in a downturn is through monetary policy ... I am concerned that without dropping interest rates we won't see the revival we all wish to see in the construction sector, our business sector, all of the private industries that rely on being able to borrow to generate the growth that New Zealanders want to see,' Willis said. Meanwhile Hipkins, would not say whether he would have dropped his spending and borrowing commitments had he won the election. Labour's 2023 plan included just over $3b more borrowing than National's. Hipkins did not definitively say he would have made cuts in light of the deteriorating finances. 'What I indicated before the election would have been our priorities, which was looking at how you get more effective spending. 'Take health, more money on preventative healthcare, like free prescriptions and making doctors' visits more accessible has the potential to save money, because you end up with fewer people in emergency departments,' he said. Asked whether Labour would have cut its cloth had it won in 2023, Hipkins said, 'We need to accept Nicola Willis has made this worse. Increasing unemployment is at least in part because of the decisions that this Government has taken. 'If I look at areas where I wouldn't have wanted to spend extra money, I wouldn't have wanted to spend extra money on Jobseeker benefits. I would have rather kept Kiwis in work.'
