The tide has started to turn on Finance Minister Nicola Willis as KiwiRail paints a grim picture of her decision to call time on its Cook Strait mega ferry project.<\/p>\n
She made a bold move late last year to\u00a0decline KiwiRail\u2019s request for more money\u00a0after the Inter-island Resilience Connection (iReX) project ballooned to almost $3 billion.<\/p>\n
It sent a sharp warning to the public sector that\u00a0this Government is not afraid to shake up projects\u00a0that may have previously been presented as a fait accompli.<\/p>\n
It played well for the\u00a0newly minted finance minister, but it was always a risk because Willis made the call without having a plan B.<\/p>\n
The only new thing the Government has announced this year concerning the ferries is appointments\u00a0to a new ministerial advisory group\u00a0to consider the future of the Cook Strait service. Nelson Airport chief executive Mark Thompson will chair the group and is joined by two other members – Mark Cairns and Roger Sowry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The tide has started to turn on Finance Minister Nicola Willis as KiwiRail paints a grim picture of her decision to call time on its Cook Strait mega ferry proj<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t