Worthless. Completely without value. Unsaleable.
"He said the Labour government, which bought the railway from Toll and renamed it KiwiRail, had made a string of commitments which added up to about $3 billion but it allocated only about $120 million.
"The Government is now the owner of a business which probably has no value, in fact negative value, having just eight months ago paid almost a billion dollars for it," Mr English said in Parliament."
Michael Cullen you will go down as the biggest loser this country has ever seen.
To see the current minister of finance call Kiwi Rail worthless is the most telling monument to the last nine years we will see. A period where we allowed fucking prefects to run the country.
The ACC blowout that he deliberately hid from the PREFU is one thing, but there was absolutely no reason at all to buy Kiwi Rail. It was a deliberate attempt at scorched earth and surely our anti terror laws must have something in them that can see this wanker charged.
If Cullen had any honour, any vestiges of decency within that carcass he would renounce his job, renounce his pension and then he would crawl off somewhere quiet and kill himself.
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Michael Cullen is the Pierre Laval of NZ politics.
"After the Liberation (1945), he was arrested, found guilty of High treason, and executed by firing squad."
I have only been here 20 years, have we ever had another politician who simply for the sake of ideology and politics has spunked more of our money down the sink?
Not a f**king chance in hell of this socialist bastard waiving his parliamentary entitlements. After all, he has a nice house being built in BOP to pay for.
Where is my two iron? I might still get the opportunity to smack the smarmy bastard over the head at Hastings Golf Club before he thumbs his nose at the constituents of Napier Electorate and heads off to BOP.
Bastard isn't even a member. Probably gets Peter Beaven to pay his green fees.
To see the current minister of finance call Kiwi Rail worthless is the most telling monument to the last nine years we will see.
Er, I don't think the new finance minister declaring the previous govt's one incompetent actually counts for much.
have we ever had another politician who simply for the sake of ideology and politics has spunked more of our money down the sink?
Not sure, but Muldoon, Douglas and Richardson would probably all be contenders if you adjusted for inflation. I figure the real lesson with Kiwirail is "Stop selling our stuff off cheap to your asset-stripper mates, you pricks."
PM, are you suggesting that Bill English is lying about the kiwifail numbers? Because if you are inclined to believe Cullen on this one I may have some shares in a unicorn farm that I could let you have on the cheap.
I have no brief for the ex-Government at all.... however, I think we should acknowledge that the value to a country like ours of a railway system far outweighs the mere profit and loss account of the business. No self respecting profit oriented company (Toll for example) would continue to pour money into it indefinitely because profit-wise it is a lemon, so long term they would have probably closed the whole thing down. But where would we be with no railway in this country?
Maybe government ownership is the only option if we want to continue having the asset. After all, the railways were built and developed with government money in the beginning so maybe the big mistake was to sell it off to people who had no interest in seeing it thrive in the first place.
"I think we should acknowledge that the value to a country like ours of a railway system far outweighs the mere profit and loss account of the business."
A narrow gauge 19th century dinosaur that Cullen allowed Toll to strip all the good bits out of.
Billions of dollars spunked into the sink and you reduce it to that flippant comment.
LSD or just dope.. Whatever it is please send some up to me so I can stop fretting as well.
One thing I agree on though Dave, it probably is better off in govt hands. It is just a pity that Cullen paid enough for us to have a couple of space shuttles as well.
Are the unicorns good bbqd PM?
Dave Mann - If the private owners had no interest in seeing it thrive, why did they start new passenger services (all of which are now gone admittedly)? It's leftwing propaganda that the previous owners weren't interested in it thriving - although they did engage in dodgy accounting practices around how capital was treated.
The logical step was to run it down and focus on the main routes and traffic - but when that was tried, Labour panicked.
The railways can only ever be "of value" to its users not to "us."If it is not turning a profit, then its users are not relying on it commercially. Close it up NOW! Then, within the hour, do the same to ACC.
"But where would we be with no railway in this country? "
Outside of Wellington, Johnsonville, Hutt Valley and the Kapiti Coast, everyone knows the answer to that. You save up and buy a car, pays yor petrol taxes and tolls and gets a road. Come on, we are a sparsely populated country bigger than the United Kingdom. What's wrong with cars and the odd bus?
How much taxpayer subsidy did the long distance coach lines get last year? My guess is NONE, yet they thrive, paying road user charges to boot. Rail is worthless in NZ, but stumbles on like a zombie vampire, drinking the blood of taxpayers.
What a tremendous waste of money. All so Michael Cullen could avoid giving tax cuts.
The real cost of Labour’s CORRUPT election night result of 2005 becomes more and more apparent by the day.
I think we should acknowledge that the value to a country like ours of a railway system far outweighs the mere profit and loss account of the business
Crap. completely crap. Motoniu. Clyde. Tiwai. and on and on and on and on and on. Thinking Big with my fucking money
Maybe government ownership is the only option if we want to continue having the asset.
How hard is it for you socialists to understand: We don't want this piece of crap. First, for those of you who attended state school: it's not an asset. It's just not. It is a TWO BILLION DOLLAR LIABILITY. We don't want it. We don't want state schools. We don't want state hospitals. We don't want welfare. And we sure as hell don't want Cullens fund or his train set - All of which are paid for by the taxes of those of us who work hard and are paid more than $100K per year
sell the lot. now. cut it up for scrap. Take the billions out of the cullen fund and the billions out of the ACC funds - while there is still something left their to liquidate - and give it back to the people who paid for it
Outside of Wellington, Johnsonville, Hutt Valley and the Kapiti Coast,
Even in the parasitical boil that is wellington, the proportion of population who use trains is vanishingly small. And they are all either civl servants and bludgers. The solution here is once again to scrap rail, and to move the bits of government we absolutely must keep to somewhere closer to the people: a couple of new towerblocks outside Mangere would be the most obvious place!
PM, are you suggesting that Bill English is lying about the kiwifail numbers?
No, not really. I wouldn't rule it out, because he's a politician, but it actually just comes down to the fact that fixing up the ideology-driven stupidity of previous govts is expensive.
ideology-driven stupidity of previous govts is expensive.
Hell yeah. fixing up the ideology-driven stupidity of this Labour government is ruinously expensive
Glad you see that getting rid of KiwiRail, KiwiBank, KiwiSaver, CullenFund, ACC, WFF, AntiSmacking, SchoolsPlus, CivilUnions, government funding for unions (still ongoing!), Sickness benefits, Dole, DBP, and all the rest - are expensive matters of urgency for the new government!
It's a nonsense to say close the lot. Some parts of Kiwirail have always made money, like the ferries and the main trunk line.
Rail would be quite profitable if it focused on the main trunk and the coal from the West Coast (and the TranzAlpine which carries 9 carriages of tourists at a premium most days), and the ferries which are seriously profitable. Some of the network is a dog (everything north of Auckland, Napier-Gisborne, Rotorua), and should close if the business isn't profitable. Lines that can't be serviced should be open to anyone else to operate trains if they want to pay the maintenance costs, and after a set time, close and make them into walking/cycling tracks.
Rail can do long distances and bulk commodities very well, but in NZ there is only one long distance route, and only three bulk commodities (coal, milk and logs) in specific places. Just because Labour stuffed up this business sector doesn't mean it can't work - it can work, in specific instances.
I agree Liberty, I have never called for the closing of it. And concentrating on the salvageable parts would be for the best. How much easier it would have been for us if Cullen had not spunked a billion on buying it though.
It's bad enough that the Financial Fool paid so much money for it, and then agreed to subsidise the truck transport division that Toll retained. The subsidy was supposed to last only a few months but it is still being paid because BOLGER and his gang of socialist directors are too lazy and incompetent to put an end to it..The result is that competing NZ trucking Companies are losing money.
It's a nonsense to say close the lot. Some parts of Kiwirail have always made money, like the ferries and the main trunk line.
So. Some parts of the health service have cured people. Some people take the Dole or DBP and go on to be cabinet ministers or PMs. the exception does not prove the rule!
It's not - ultimately - about making money. Even those parts that make money simply do not provide anything like a commercial return on investment. And having a partial rail system will always lead to greenie/lefty temptation to rebuild to a country-wide system. The only way to prevent that is to tear up the tracks and sell them and the rolling-stock for scrap!
Cost: nothing.
Revenue: nothing.
Ongoing commitment: nothing
Toll were running it into the ground. If Cullen hadn't brought it, it would all be closed in 5-10 years anyway. Fire everyone, sell it for scrap, close it down, sell the right-of-way to a commerical transitway operator. End of story.
It all depends on whether you view an infrastructural asset like a railway as a 'public good' or as simply a way to make money, doesn't it? Also, the answer to that question itself depends on whether you acknowledge the concept of a 'public good' at all, or whether the very idea has you rolling around frothing at the indignity of being 'robbed' by the 'government' to pay for something that you don't personally want to use.
The fact is that our tiny under-populated country could never have afforded to build a rail network if it had been left up to private enterprise to do it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There simply wouldn't have been enough profit in it to make it an attractive proposition... so the governments of the days built, expanded and maintained it in order to serve the agriculture, the industries and the people who worked in them and commuted and holidayed around the country.
In former times, the Railways employed shitloads (sorry, I can't be bothered to google all the boring statistics) of people and they weren't all hopeless layabouts either. Sure, there must have been some borderline retards doing menial and meaningless jobs in dark corners (who are now living on benefits actually), but just think of the engineering skills which went into constructing the lines and bridges etc, right up to actually designing and building locomotives and rolling stock here in a tiny country of 2.5 million or so. Fitters, engineers, upholsterers, carpenters, draughtsmen, welders, surveyers, architects, accountants, clerical workers, personnel people... the list goes on and on. None of this would have been possible if it had not been for the country and its public owning and building it in the first place and its very existance served to expand the skills base of the whole country.
The fact that rail under private ownership has been allowed to rot away into a useless drain on the shareholders' wallets is NOT a function of the inherent value of a railway per se. It is, in my view, a logical result of the lack of recognition of the concept of a public good.
And no, actually, anonymous, I am not a socialist - but neither do I subscribe automatically to the knee-jerk notion that 'all government is evil'. And, in my opinion, anybody who can link smacking their children with ownership of a railway network in the same context is a bloody moron.
It all depends on whether you view an infrastructural asset like a railway as a 'public good' or as simply a way to make money, doesn't it?
Not really, no, It depends of you are a socialist or not.
As Maggie said: there is no such thing as society.
So there is no such thing as 'public good'.
(who are now living on benefits actually)
The solution to this problem is to abolish benefits, not keep the trainset!
logical result of the lack of recognition of the concept of a public good.
wrong. it is the result of the logical lack of recognition of the concept of public good. There is no such thing. Your arguing in favour of it marks you out as socialist, plain and simple.
As Maggie said: there is no such thing as society.
So there is no such thing as 'public good'.
The fact that you and Thatcher are both nuts isn't really very relevant to this thread.
"It's not - ultimately - about making money. Even those parts that make money simply do not provide anything like a commercial return on investment. And having a partial rail system will always lead to greenie/lefty temptation to rebuild to a country-wide system. The only way to prevent that is to tear up the tracks and sell them and the rolling-stock for scrap!"
Gee and some people have no clue... There is MORE freight being carried by rail around the country than AT ANY OTHER time in history... There is also MORE frieght being carried by rail than on the ROAD...
Nice try, sox:
"Currently, 92 per cent of freight, by weight, is transported via road, 6 per cent by rail, 2 per cent by coastal shipping and nothing is transported by air, according to the national freight demands study.
However, in terms of the length of haul, rail and coastal shipping have a larger share of the market, representing 15 per cent each. Road makes up the additional 70 per cent."
http://clunking-fist.blogspot.com/2008/10/are-you-newspaper-or-gummint-press.html
"Currently, 92 per cent of freight, by weight, is transported via road, 6 per cent by rail, 2 per cent by coastal shipping and nothing is transported by air, according to the national freight demands study.
However, in terms of the length of haul, rail and coastal shipping have a larger share of the market, representing 15 per cent each. Road makes up the additional 70 per cent."
I'll see if I can dig up the figures I have seen which paint a vastly different picture, however I will just say that any report that says no frieght is sent by air is instantly suspect. I know many buisness's that ship by air. So I wonder what their methodology was.
"I know many buisness's that ship by air."
I suspect the report I cite is about domestic transport. Are you sure you aren't thinking of international delivery?
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