Frustration is growing on the Chatham Islands over the delay in acquiring a new cargo ship – an important lifeline for one of the most remote places on the planet.
The 2022 Budget promised $30 million for a new vessel, but the money has not yet been provided.
The current ship – the Southern Tiare – is 35 years old, prone to breakdown and infrequently visits. It leads to all sorts of headaches.
The Chatham Islands are about 800 kilometres to the east of the mainland.
About 660 people live across the main island Chatham and Pitt Island.
The economy is powered by diesel and livelihoods are heavily reliant on the Southern Tiare. But for four months this year, the ship didn't visit. It was away being fixed until August. The island only had two days of fuel left.
"Essentially the lights would have gone out and that would have been disastrous," said Monique Croon, mayor of the Chathams.
The ship is meant to visit twice a month, but it's more like once every three weeks and that's if things are going well. Even since the ship went away for survey, it's still had mechanical problems on nearly every voyage.
Timetables are inconsistent and locals are deeply frustrated.
"You can't run a business and you can't run a farm if it stays this way, we want it to change," said Croon.
There are two shops on the island. Jacqui Southcombe, who works at Dough N Go, said the shop is frequently running out of supplies.
"We've run out of milk, cream, yeast, flower, the basics, pet food."
She said stocks were "really, really low" when the ship didn't visit for four months.
"That's when the plane picked up the slack for us. We were lucky it was out of tour season so we were able to get a bit of freight through. The price increase reflected that," said Southcombe.
It's not just the island's imports, with live animal exports also at the mercy of the ship. Farmers have shifted far less stock this year.
Tony Anderson, who has one of the largest farms on the Chathams, said he couldn't get 2000 of his lambs on the ship because it was away for so long.
Anderson said that led to his farm to being overstocked and running out of feed. He said he had to put down 400 of 800 cattle otherwise everything would have starved.
"So we didn't have the grass. So we had to destroy 400 cattle, which you've seen evidence of and that wasn't a very nice thing and they were put down because there was nowhere else to send them," said Anderson.
When asked if it was a case of poor farm management, Anderson said, "Oh I'm sure I've got problems" but put the blame on the ship.
"Most of our animals will go to prime which means they are well cared for, well looked after, and if they get off the island at the right time, our systems are fine," said Anderson.
"Unfortunately this year with the survey of the ship and the way it was done and the length of time it took, and through the autumn, the critical time when we needed to move our animals, they just didn't get moved."
He said the priority was to get lambs on the ship because they are time sensitive to market prices.
"We've got a massive backlog of sheep to get out and so there was just no chance of a significant amount of cattle getting on the ship," said Anderson.
In a statement, the Ministry for Primary Industries said it is aware some animals had to be humanely culled due to limited feed. It is not aware of any breaches to animal welfare standards on the Chathams during the ship's outage.
There are 42 farms across the Chathams and many are struggling to turn a profit.
On nearby Pitt Island, farmers didn't get a visit from the boat for seven months.
Anderson said because his 2000 lambs missed the critical window for getting on the ship they have now devalued in price and become mutton.
"So they've gone from a gross of about $140, down to in today's market about $60, but it costs $40 to ship them to New Zealand.
"So, we've just lost $200,000," he said.
An abattoir has been floated as a possible solution but what most people want is a reliable shipping service.
The Southern Tiare is owned and run by the Chathams Enterprise Trust. The Trust is frustrated the $30 million promised for a replacement ship in the 2022 Budget has not yet been provided.
"We badly need our new vessel. Our current vessel since survey has suffered mechanical and physical failure. Our schedule is consistently behind time, our island is really struggling because we don't have a reliable timely shipping service at the moment, and we are at risk of a breakdown with another service outage which would just cripple our island," said the Trust's chairperson Alison Turner.
So why has progress stalled?
"I wish I could answer that easily," said Turner. "We needed to demonstrate to the government we had an ownership plan, a governance structure and operating model that was suitable."
She said the Trust had done that: "Absolutely, in spades."
In a statement, the Transport Ministry said it's a complicated project involving construction of a customised vessel and it's been working to identify an appropriate delivery partner.
The island was meant to have a new ship by 2025. Turner is not hopeful.
"It is entirely unrealistic to think we are going to have a replacement vessel trading by 2025," she said.
The new MP for the Chathams – part of the Rongotai electorate – visited the island this week. Julie-Anne Genter, from the Green Party, said her priority is finding out what's going on with the replacement ship.
"It is somewhat mysterious to me why money appropriated in 2022 hasn't been able to move forward to a procurement process.
"Because procuring a boat takes some time. You want to get on with it quickly, because it will still be years before they get a new boat once that process starts," she said.
"As the local MP I'll be asking questions and certainly contacting the public service to try and find out what needs to move forward."
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