Collateral damage: Rail-link ghost town
Failure to foresee fate of businesses shows remarkable ineptitude
It seems a remarkable thing that the City Rail Link could have been started with no real consideration given to those who would be most affected. I have immersed myself in the story for the past couple of months mainly because of the pleas from the businesses who, like me, could not work out why things had been allowed to get to where they were.
This was important not just because of the CRL, but for all major infrastructure projects that lie ahead — which, according to the Government, are many.
Part of the problem appeared to be that previous major projects had involved largely roading, whereby businesses weren’t directly affected. Homes in the way were compulsorily acquired by law.
But that doesn’t excuse the ineptitude involved in thinking you can go into downtown Auckland, the country’s biggest city, start digging massive holes that will take years to complete, throw up fencing and blockades in the area that stop people entering and somehow not stop for just a minute and think to yourself,
‘Gee these businesses in the middle of all of this are surely in for a rough old time’.
Not only is there major disruption, but what is it we know about major projects? They all run late, so no matter what was said at the start by way of a finish date, it will never come to pass.
Neither will the bill, but that at least is not the problem for the local businesses who as sure as night follows day started to sink under the weight of a programme of disruption.
After receiving the pleas, we asked Transport Minister Phil Twyford what his plan was. He muttered something about a potential hardship fund, Auckland Mayor Phil Goff got involved, but nothing happened.
It was a simple decision — did they want to do something or not?
Twyford said City Rail Link Limited was working “hand in hand” with businesses offering “material support”. Upon reporting of this, the businesses said, “What support?”
I asked the Prime Minister and she told me Twyford told her they had some “innovative plans” with “several businesses” that she couldn’t name, but they were negotiating with. I reported that as well.
At which point the businesses involved contacted me to say, “What businesses?”, as not one of their group had any idea of any negotiation.
I got the Prime Minister to give me the paperwork and as it turned out there weren’t “several” businesses, there were at best two.
One had a lease takeover option from the CRL enterprise and the other a pop-up option elsewhere. None of the others appeared to be being helped in any way, shape or form.
By the time we spoke to CRLL, who it must be said are hellishly difficult to work with, the company claimed it was between a rock and a hard place. The offers made — the pop-up and lease option — were as much as it could do. Its remit prevented it writing cheques, which apparently is what most businesses wanted.
CRLL head Dr Sean Sweeney, who had been lured back here from Australia, told me the rules needed changing, the remit wasn’t right, and the fact project planners thought they could enter a project like this with no compo plan was mad.
He is, of course, right.
I went back and forward between Twyford’s office (also hellishly difficult to deal with) and the Prime Minister’s (in comparison not bad at all). She finally revealed last Tuesday that an announcement was coming.
That announcement got made last Thursday, which was months after the initial problem was raised.
And the announcement was that a hardship fund would be produced, but with no more detail than that.
It had taken months to come up with a yes or no — no wonder Twyford couldn’t build 100,000 houses.
My suspicion is that because Sweeney dropped the Government in it on my radio programme, they’ve dumped him in it by leaving the hardship fund details to him.
He tells me it will be weeks rather than months before the fine print is sorted, so given we got told that on November 1 then by the end of this month we should at least see light at the end of an otherwise shambolic, unprofessional, disorganised tunnel.
There is no excuse for what’s happened, and no good reason for its rectification to have taken so long.
If they can’t put a simple hardship fund in place, brought about through forward planning and common decency, what’s that say about their ability to deliver major infrastructure projects and running the country?