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Andrew Dickens: Short-sighted planning of ports could cost us billions

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Tue, 30 Apr 2019, 12:00PM
Ports of Auckland. Photo / NZME
Ports of Auckland. Photo / NZME

Andrew Dickens: Short-sighted planning of ports could cost us billions

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Tue, 30 Apr 2019, 12:00PM

So let’s look at coalition promises and the hype of the hustings.

Politics is often a game of reducing complex human activities, plans and intentions and then reducing them to catchy slogans that anyone can understand and then vote for.

After all, the Labour slogan at the last election was 'Let’s Do This'. What did that even mean? It didn’t just simplify Labour’s plans it actively didn’t mention them at all. Do what exactly? When you think about it it’s ridiculous.

Barack Obama did the same thing with 'Yes We Can!' What?

Norman Kirk got the Labour Party across the line in 1972 with a Bob Harvey classic 'It’s Time'. For what?

At least with Donald Trump’s slogan, you knew what he wanted to do but not necessarily how when he said, 'Make America Great Again'.

It’s the same when you get down to individual policies. At the last election, Winston Peters casually said let’s move port activities to Northport in Whangarei. Sounds easy you just tell the boats to go somewhere else.

Luckily someone thought let’s ask the experts and so a working group was formed to look at our port structure. Now I know that the words working and group make some people break out in anti-government hives but thank heavens we had this one before Winston gave new navigation instructions to ships.

Turns out that our port structure is very inefficient and very possibly acting against our national interest. Stuff is coming in through Auckland and going out through Tauranga so nearly half the containers you see are empty.

And rather than saying that Northport should take up more of the slack, it says there is no point in putting anything more into Northport unless you fix the rail line to Auckland. And that will cost a fortune.

In fact, any reorganisation to fix the mess will take $20 billion at least. The biggest infrastructure spend in our country’s history.

Good one Winston.

Proof that just because it’s easy to say doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

Our short-sighted infrastructure plans when it came to ports has cost us a lot already and is costing us more in lost opportunities. Something has got to be done. The working group is releasing two more reports on the whole schemozzle. They say the problems are not insurmountable, but they will be very expensive to fix.

So brace yourself and, once again, curse the people who made such short-sighted decisions a generation ago.

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