Source: New Zealand Government
Good afternoon.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Sue Tindal, Peter Reidy and KiwiRail for hosting us all today.
It is good to be in Christchurch, where the first rail in New Zealand was laid. Indeed, the South Island was home to former Premier Julius Vogel, who started New Zealand’s rail system. He built more rail in ten years during the 1870s than the entire 130 years that followed. Now that’s fast-track infrastructure.
Our acknowledgements to KiwiRail’s workers, unions, and customers; to the companies involved in building this precinct; to Mainland Rail; and to local leaders including Ngāi Tahu, Mayors Phil Mauger and Lydia Gliddon, Deputy Mayor, Regional Council Chair Deon Swiggs, councillors, and local Members of Parliament.
We offer a special acknowledgement to the Ambassadors of Switzerland and Spain who join us today, reflecting the fact that the new fleet of locomotives are built by Swiss company Stadler at their manufacturing base in Valencia, Spain.
When last responsible for rail, we committed $75 million to build a new rail maintenance facility here in Christchurch, supporting around 150 construction jobs and resetting rail for a strong future in the South Island. A final $35 million investment capped off the programme some years ago for the full precinct upgrade.
If anybody is confused, “we” means Shane Jones and yours truly.
Because here are the facts:
Rail in this country was degraded and in a state of managed decline. While many were fast on the lip but slow on the hip, we stepped up and committed to a wholesale rebuild of the industry.
We changed the law to fund the rail network like we fund the state highway network. Since then, sleeper by sleeper, bridge by bridge, year by year, we are rebuilding the rail network.
A decade ago, the network would shut often due to slips and washouts. This year, with so many major storms, only one washout near Te Puke has stopped the network for just days, not weeks like the old days.
We funded the replacement of old locomotives and wagons, so they can spend less time in the workshop being fixed and more time serving our nation by hauling heavy goods across the country.
We rebuilt workshops like this one in Christchurch and Hillside in Dunedin, upgraded them in Auckland and Lower Hutt, and built a new one in Hamilton because we wanted safer, more efficient, more productive working environments for skilled workers to maintain railway rolling stock.
These investments—ongoing for the network, one-off for the commercial assets—achieve one thing: reliability.
If trains turn up on time, customers use them. In transport, schedule reliability is everything. As the network and rolling stock reliability improves, so too does KiwiRail’s profitability and the share of rail moving New Zealand’s goods.
KiwiRail’s half-year result shows the evidence: it earned $73 million in profit, exceeding its target, and lifted volumes by 7 percent versus road lifting by 2 percent. That shows freight is moving from road to rail.
This is an industry that is regaining its purpose and its confidence.
And more importantly, it is doing so in service of our country.
And the best is yet to come: the 66 new DM locomotives will be a major advance for rail performance in New Zealand.
The entire DX locomotive fleet will complete their service, after forty and fifty years running, replaced by DM locomotives with greater hauling power and cabs at both ends to simplify yard movements.
What’s more: rail is already 2.5 times more fuel efficient than trucks on average, and the fuel economy of the DMs are vastly superior. As we see when fuel prices spike, it is rail that proves its worth. We saw this in the 1970s, and we are seeing it again today.
It proves once again that being green is an economic choice; requiring none of the eyerolling, virtue signalling nonsense seen by some of our opponents in Parliament.
But thankfully, we are not at Parliament. We are in Christchurch, with people who know how to get things done.
You have in your midst the team running Mainland Rail, a private company that bought the old Capital Connection carriages from Wellington and diesel units from Auckland Transport.
This evening, they are running the very first major events excursion train to the first Crusaders match at the brand-new Christchurch Stadium. We have the honour of catching that train, although I hasten to add: as Minister for Rail, not as a rugby supporter.
Would any of this have happened had we not set a course to rebuild the rail infrastructure, giving confidence to people like Mainland Rail to put their money at risk by giving the rail business a go?
They have great ambitions to use the rail network within and around Christchurch for public transport services.
So to the local body officials in the room wanting passenger rail services here in Christchurch, listen up: you can be like Auckland was and waste time on light rail waiting for hand-outs from the taxpayer, or you can be like Waikato and use the existing rail infrastructure and back it by funding half like every public transport service in this country.
To be clear, that is not an endorsement of any new service, of Mainland Rail, or even KiwiRail. It is a statement of commonsense to those with grand ideas: put in the work to build a viable proposition for your community.
Because as you have seen today with this building, these locomotives, and the performance of KiwiRail when delivering our strategy: we deliver good ideas.
And with that it is a pleasure, as Minister for Rail, to at last launch the Waltham Maintenance Hub and the first four of many DM Class locomotives.
Thank you.