Timeline of events behind Spirit of Tasmania saga
Trying to keep track of what’s happened with the Spirit of Tasmania saga? Political editor David Killick breaks down the key moments
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They’re probably not short of local examples, but the business school at UTAS could use the new TT-Line ferries as a case study of how not to run a major project.
The two new Spirit of Tasmania ferries were announced in 2017 and contracts signed the following year. Then-infrastructure minister Jeremy Rockliff said the new vessels would be operating in the summer of 2021. That was later walked back to 2023.
The Liberals tore up the $700m contract with German shipbuilders in 2020 and tried to come up with a plan for a local build.
That failed, as expected. The Public Accounts Committee heard on Tuesday that bright idea added around $40m to the project cost.
Economist Saul Eslake described the local build bid as the most “ill-advised decision taken by any Tasmanian Government” since Premier Robin Gray knocked back $500m not to build the Gordon-below-Franklin dam. The government shouted him down. History has proven him right.
New contracts were signed in 2021 with Finnish shipbuilder RMC.
Covid raged, war broke out in Ukraine, Russia bombed the contracted steelworks flat, and the shipbuilder nearly went broke. TT-Line chipped in another $80m.
Then someone forgot the new ships would need a berth.
Government business enterprises TT-Line and TasPorts conducted an odd internecine war while the cost of the Devonport berth upgrades went from $90m to $375m, with $50m for a temporary solution while the new ships shuttle half-empty back and forth to Geelong until it’s all sorted out, say about 2026.
If raging egos had been matched by raging competence and those responsible had put the same energy into getting a result as they have been on shifting blame and settling scores we’d have both ferries and berths by now.
Does it matter who knew what when, when the only certainty is that the long-suffering Tasmanian taxpayer was always the last? That’s the spirit, of Tasmania.
This unholy mess has cost Mike Grainger his job as chairman of TT-Line, Michael Ferguson his job as infrastructure minister — and the rest of us something like $500m more than it should have.
It’s money Australia’s poorest state can ill afford to squander.
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