From Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre

Kiwi Rail current CEO Greg Miller said several times over the last two years that he will not re-open the Gisborne section of the rail service for freight and passenger services for this highly productive region which desperately needs a connection to the ‘national rail network and export ports’ again. It is high time to stop this policy of refusal to supply a rail service again considering it was caused by a lack of maintenance that caused blocked drains and slips in a flooding from heavy rain in February 2012 .

Now after 10 years of closure of a highly productive region a $600.000 study confirmed to the Government that the rail service needs to be re-opened along with a Treasury Report showing the “The value of rail in NZ” also sitting on Kiwi rail website.

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.

In a Book of Māori history produced by the current owners of Kiwi rail, ‘NZ Railways Corporation’ - there is an account of Māori involvement in building the rail system in this region during the past.

CEAC is now regarding Kiwi Rail as ‘acting cavalier’ towards the iwi’s and their leaders of these regions of HB/Gisborne who were the Tangata whenua “Tribal Land Owners” of the land in the areas that was agreed to by the original owners in agreements by them and the Government to forge a rail route through their tribal land.

They were the along with surveyors and others were pivotal 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 then by the Government minister for “Native affairs” John Bryce and in meetings with tribal leaders this letter as a promise pledge was given by Government surveyors to the Kaumatua at meetings at the time of the planning of rail services around all NZ.

CEAC Takeout; now requests to Government that “History cannot be erased”

So replace the kiwi rail leadership that is not carrying out past Government promises made to Tangata whenua along with the 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.”

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