Trains at Wellington Railway Station. (Photo: Getty Images)

The BulletinMay 1, 2023

A morning of chaos on Wellington trains

Contributing writer

Trains at Wellington Railway Station. (Photo: Getty Images)

As rail users struggle through a nightmare commute, politicians are blasting an ‘unacceptable’ situation that ‘beggars belief’, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

A bad day to be a Wellington train commuter

It was only last Wednesday that we reported on a survey showing Aucklanders have never been less satisfied with their public transport service. Two days later, Kiwirail said to Auckland Transport: hold my beer. On Friday it was announced that Wellington’s Metlink train services would be severely reduced – potentially for weeks – because Kiwirail’s track evaluation car, the only one in the country, had broken down, forcing a blanket 70 kph speed restriction on the Kāpiti line and creating flow-on effects across most of the network from today. Daran Ponter, chair of the Greater Wellington Regional Council, which runs Metlink, called it a “monumental failure” by the state owned enterprise. “It’s not clear how long Kiwirail have known about this but to only give Wellington three or four days’ notice before the restrictions are in place is simply ludicrous.” On Saturday, Kiwirail said disruptions should now last less than a week, after mechanics were able to fix the evaluation car more quickly than expected. Kiwirail has also apologised to commuters for the problems.

An ‘unacceptable’ situation that ‘beggars belief’

The revised timeline is a relief, but questions are still being raised about how the go-slow was allowed to happen in the first place. Transport minister Michael Wood says the disruptions are “unacceptable” and he has expressed his displeasure to those in charge. “All options are being explored to reinstate services as quickly as possible, and assurances will be put in place to prevent this from happening again.” Wood has summoned Kiwirail executives to the Beehive this morning to explain what went wrong and how they plan to address it. National’s transport spokesperson Simeon Brown says the situation “beggars’ belief” and is calling on the government to “move heaven and earth to do whatever it takes to fix this problem and then urgently order an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of what has happened”.

For some commuters, better days are on the horizon

It’s not all bad news for Wellington rail. Over the weekend The Post – the newly rebranded Dominion Post – reported that the government is to buy a fleet of 18 hybrid trains to run on the Kāpiti and Wairarapa lines into the capital. The government declined to reveal how much it was spending on the trains, but The Post understands it could be in the “high hundreds of millions”. A fortnight ago on the website of the campaign group Save Our Trains, Darren Davis & Malcolm McCracken wrote about the poor state of the network serving Wairarapa and the Kāpiti Coast north of Waikanae. The Capital Connection from Palmerston North to Wellington “is on life support and being patched up with refurbished rolling stock from the 1970s to keep it limping along for a few more years”, they wrote, while Wairarapa trains “are out of capacity and also in urgent need of an upgrade”. Both lines are set for major improvements when the new trains arrive.

Meanwhile, on the ferries…

For Kiwirail, the rail track breakdown is another headache in what has already been a very bad year. Interislander services are getting back to normal after its Kaitaki ferry resumed sailings in mid-April, but the passenger strandings caused by the ferry’s two-month suspension – along with a number of other issues – may have a long-lasting effect on the Interislander brand. Kiwirail does not expect to take delivery of replacement ships for its ageing fleet until 2025, and while their arrival will be welcomed by passengers and freight operators, some Picton residents are worried about the massive size of the new “mega-ferries”. “If something goes wrong here, it’s going to be carnage,” warned Tim Healey of watchdog group Guardians of the Sounds.

Keep going!

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The BulletinApril 28, 2023

A drug-rape case of stunning brutality and scale

Catherine McGregor

Contributing writer

For the women who testified in the trial of two Christchurch rapists, the immediate ordeal is over. The trauma may take a lifetime to address, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

For survivors, a five-year journey to justice

Sexual offending is such a part of our daily reality that it can be easy to become inured to news stories about rape, abuse and sexual assault. But then a case lands that is so huge, the scale of the offending so horrific, that it’s impossible to look away. The trial and conviction of two Christchurch men for a slew of offences – including rape, sexual violation, stupefying and making intimate visual recordings without consent – is such a case. The men, who for three years stalked the now-closed inner city bar Mama Hooch looking for young women to drug and rape, have been convicted on 69 separate charges involving 17 victims. The case dates back to 2018, when two young women went to police the day after being assaulted by one of the men. “Their complaint led the police to start looking further,” reports Newshub’s Christchurch correspondent, Juliet Speedy. “A search of the police intelligence database between 2016 and 2019 disclosed 38 incidents across Canterbury, 24 of them coming from Mama Hooch.” The investigation, dubbed Operation Sinatra, would eventually see 127 charges laid; a total of 30 women made allegations.

‘You have to learn to live with that thread’

For the women who testified, the immediate ordeal is over. But Jo Bader, an Aviva sexual violence manager who has assisted survivors in the case, tells RNZ Checkpoint their experience of sexual assault will remain a “thread that’s woven into their lives. You have to learn to live with that thread.” During the case, the “men’s lawyers repeatedly questioned the women about their alcohol and drug use,” writes 1News’ Thomas Mead, in an excellent account of the long running investigation. “The questions would follow a familiar formula, all variations of the same thought: ‘How much did you have to drink that night?’” Bader says such questioning is a “very pointed way of making people feel like it’s their fault for having drunk so much”, noting also that “legally, you can’t actually consent if you’re intoxicated, anyway”. On The Spinoff, criminology professor Jan Jordan says the case “reminds us of how deep women’s blame and shame remains when it comes to rape, and how men continue to feel entitled to women’s bodies”. The convicted men may be vilified as “monsters”, “but we need to recognise their behaviour has come from somewhere, as an extension of patriarchal beliefs and attitudes.”

Why drink spiking is so hard to prove

The crime of stupefying – specifically, drink spiking – played a large role in the Christchurch case. Writes Speedy, the victims reported experiencing “memory loss, blackouts, vomiting, a weak and floppy body… feeling like being on anesthetic and displaying out-of-character behaviour such as rage.” The stupefying charges were hardest to make stick, as it was difficult to prove which of the men specifically spiked the drinks. On The Conversation, forensic scientist Lata Gautem says there are other reasons the crime can be hard to prove. “The substances associated with drink spiking cases are not always easy to notice – they dissolve quickly in drinks and do not have any smell or colour. By the time a victim reports a case, some drugs may have been cleared from the body, making drug detection difficult from blood or urine samples.”

10 years on, an echo of the Roast Busters scandal

The Christchurch men were part of a WhatsApp group where they planned attacks and shared sexually explicit material including a 14-minute rape video. There are similarities to the 2013 Roast Busters scandal, which centred on allegations a group of young Auckland men had intoxicated underage girls at parties to engage them in unlawful sexual acts, then boasted about their conquests online. No charges were laid at the time, but in 2022 two men admitted to historical sexual offences committed while they were in high school. In 2019, The Spinoff’s Alex Casey spoke to one of the survivors. “It wasn’t just a night I can forget,” ‘Laura’ told Casey. “I can’t take away my memory, I can’t take away the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me… I’m still living it.”