I think we’ve reached the point where people are going to be asking themselves not only “if I book a ticket on the Interislander, how confident can I be that they won’t cancel on me?” I think we’re at the point now we’re people will also be asking themselves how safe they feel using the service. 

I was talking to someone who said after this news about the autopilot on the Aratere the other week, that’s them done with the Interislander and, if they want or need to take a ferry across Cook Strait, it will be Bluebridge all the way. 

And that’s not because of delays. This person has lost confidence in the safety of KiwiRail’s Interislander service. 

I’m not at that point - yet. For me, I think I can say that if I jumped on an Interislander ferry right now, I’d be pretty confident about getting there safely.  

The reliability of the service going ahead and not being cancelled at the last minute is another thing. But I’d feel pretty confident about the safety side of things. But there’s a key word there: “pretty”. 

I reckon 10 years ago there’d be no “pretty” about it and I’d have no qualms at all about safety. Today, I’m still confident - but not as confident as I used to be. 

And KiwiRail should be listening to this. Because the reason my confidence in the safety of its service isn't what it used to be, isn’t because of what happened just under three weeks ago when the Aratere ran aground. 

It's because of KiwiRail’s “nothing to see here” attitude. 

Which New Zealand First leader and Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters says is nothing new. He says the people running the Interislander are just continuing what’s been happening for years. Not being upfront about things.   

Now, I know as much as the next Health & Safety and legal person, that KiwiRail has needed to be careful about this from day one. Because the last thing it wants is the crew who were on-board that ferry the night it ran aground feeling as if they’ve been thrown under the bus by their employer - and KiwiRail finding itself being hit with personal grievance cases left, right and centre. 

Generally, what happens in these situations, is employers just clam-up and say nothing. They bang-on about following a process and investigations and not jumping to conclusions and not pointing fingers. 

But that all means nothing when you have political parties speculating on social media —as New Zealand First has been— and when you get internal reports being leaked. As has happened in the past 24 hours. 

KiwiRail would have been far better to say, as soon as it knew about this issue with the wrong button being pressed, that the ship had been serviced recently, that what happened when it ran aground seemed to be related to the steering, but it looks like there was some element of human error involved. So emphasise that the ship itself wasn’t packing a sad. 

If they had done that, it would’ve done wonders for public confidence in the Interislander. But instead, we’ve now got people starting to question the safety of the service altogether. Not just its reliability - but its safety. 

I hope KiwiRail is listening. 

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