Kiwi Rail CEO Greg Miller said he will not re-open the Gisborne rail service for freight and passenger services for the region, after eight years of closure even now after a yearlong PGF $600.000 study confirmed to the Government that the rail service needs to be re-opened.

Kiwi Rail has shown crass dis-regard for this remote region to have a “safe secure land transport option” - other than a single laned road that is now gridlocked with freight trucks making road travel extremely dangerous, and causing road maintenance cost to escalate to an all-time high, while at the same time Kiwi Rail are blocking any public scrutiny of its operations as a public funded agency now operating without transparency.

CEAC is regarding Kiwi Rail as ‘acting cavalier’ towards the iwi’s of these regions of HB/Gisborne who were the Tangata whenua “Tribal Land Owners” of the land in the area that was agreed by them and the Government as others also were made to allow the rail to be built across their tribal land for a promise that the rail service “would be of great advantage to their people” in a letter signed by the Government minister for “Native affairs” John Bryce was given by Government surveyors to the Kaumatua at meetings at the time of the planning of rail services around all NZ.

History cannot be erased Kiwi Rail CEO Greg Miller, and now CEAC is in support the calls being made “that if you are not prepared to continue to “provide a rail service to the people that would be of great advantage to them” as promised in the Government letter from John Bryce then give it back to the owners of the agreement made then and pay reparations for lost services.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On The Government’s Smokefree Laws Debacle

The most charitable explanation for National’s behaviour over the smokefree legislation is that they have dutifully fulfilled the wishes of the Big Tobacco lobby and then cast around for excuses that might sell this health policy U-turn to the public. The less charitable view is that the government was being deliberately misleading. Are we to think Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is a fool or a liar? It seems rather early on in his term of office to be facing that unpleasant choice... More