Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
15 November 2012
Kiwirail Management Should Be Sacked Over Hillside Sale
New Zealand First is calling for KiwiRail chief executive Jim Quinn and his board to be sacked following their decision
to sell Hillside workshops to an Australian-based company.
Rt Hon Winston Peters says Mr Quinn and the KiwiRail board are traitors to New KiwiRail workers.
“They have consistently overlooked Hillside as being suitable to carry out all manner of KiwiRail work.
“Locomotives and freight wagons – most plagued with mechanical faults – were made in China.
“This work could have been carried out by Hillside workers to a much higher specification.”
Mr Peters says KiwiRail are going down the same disastrous path as the National Government in July 1993 when it sold our
national railway to private investors who ran it into the ground.
“Hillside has been flogged off at a massively reduced price so National’s rich, paper-shuffling business cronies can
again make as much profit as possible.
“History is repeating and it’s obscene,” says Mr Peters.
ENDS