Who was the official "sponsor" of the now sunken NZ Naval ship Manawanui? None other than former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. And now it seems we may already know what led to the total loss of the Manawanui and destruction of the way of life of large numbers of Samoan villagers. In an interview that may turn out to be a big mistake - and will be making his former political colleagues & Defense Force Staff nervous beyond belief - since it may open up huge legal claims on New Zealand from the Samoan government - former Ardern Labour Government Defense Minister Ron Mark has just revealed that his:
"[Labour Party] ministerial team purchased the vessel [in 2018] from Norway, used for oil exploration, and refitted it, getting it into service in 11 months .. It astonished our partners, the audacity that we would buy a commercial vessel of that type & press it into military service .. We bought Manawanui knowing she was not a war ship, she's a commercial operation... but with that comes a risk and the risk is that commercial vessels do not have the same level of redundancy in their systems or their design that warships do - you can't seal off compartments, create water tight compartments & keep the vessel afloat so that it can be towed, salvaged & repaired .. I guess no one anticipated that she'd hit a reef."
So there you go. I admire Ron Mark's refreshing honesty. It didn't take long for the truth to emerge. The ship was bought on the cheap - it was never meant to do reef research - quite the contrary, it was built for deep (North) Sea oil exploration. After the NZ Navy bought it, they painted it Battleship Grey to make it look like a Naval ship, even though it wasn't a Naval ship, and not built to that specification. A refit was done, again on the cheap. From what Ron Mark suggests, that refit did not "create water tight compartments" which are standard features of naval vessels, designed to prevent the total sinking that has occurred. As such, it appears the ship was never fit for its new assigned tasks.
All in all, its looking like former PM Ardern was happy to spend $15 billion on wage subsidy style schemes, handing Fletcher Building over $68 million in terms of that subsidy, which it never repaid, being nearly the entire cost of the Manawanui, but she was not prepared to make the Manawanui fully sea-worthy for the Naval tasks it was charged with doing. The consequence has been endangering 75 sailors lives and the environmental desecration of Samoa. I suppose she wont be talking about that decision at one of her Harvard seminars.
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