Labour's transport spokesperson says New Zealand has become the "laughing stock" of the world's maritime sector after a ferry ran aground near Picton late on Friday.
Now, Tangi Utikere is calling on the Government to not only take responsibility, but to stop "dragging their heels" and come up with a replacement for the problematic fleet.
Interislander's Aratere ferry was successfully refloated on Saturday night, shortly after 9pm.
The refloat came 24 hours after the vessel became stuck in sand and mud near a rocky cliff face in Tītoki Bay near Picton after a "steering failure" around 9:45pm on Friday.
It comes one day after Transport Minister Simeon Brown criticised the state-owned company for its handling of ferry maintenance.
"We also want KiwiRail to make sure they're maintaining their existing boats to the appropriate standards, which has been a significant issue that we've been highly unimpressed with coming into Government," he said at a transport and infrastructure committee on Thursday.
However, fingers are being pointed all directions, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark pointing hers at the current Government.
Just hours after the news of the ship running aground, Clark said on X: "Just saying: Didn't someone cancel the order for badly needed new NZ inter-island ferries... Are we at risk of losing the vital link connecting the North & South Islands?"
Clark was referring to a decision by Finance Minister Nicola Willis late last year to not contribute significant new funding to address cost escalations involved in replacing the Interislander ferry fleet.
Neither Brown nor Willis would appear on AM on Monday to discuss the situation, so Labour's transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere joined the show.
He said the Government needed to take responsibility.
"The reason why we are in this state of uncertainty is purely because of the Government's inability to make decisions. We are fast becoming, if we haven't already, the laughing stock of the maritime sector all around the world.
"I know Nicola Willis talks about not having a Ferrari option, she's referred to a Corolla one. The reality is this - at the moment we don't even have a Suzuki Swift size replacement on the Government's radar and it's not good enough."
Utikere said in 2021, the then-Labour led Government locked in a $551 million contract for two new inter-island ferries.
"A great, great deal. I mean, everyone I think accepts that in current day terms that would be significantly higher yet they [the Government] have no plan B that they have rolled out," he said.
Utikere said in a Coalition with three partners they all need to take responsibility for it being scrapped.
"Nicola Willis, Simeon Brown are the ones that are making the decisions in this space, along with the State-Owned Enterprises Minister [Paul Goldsmith] as well, they all need to take responsibility.
"At the end of the day, Kiwis want to have a resilient connection between the North and South Island - each day that we wait is a day too long… Kiwis just want to know, we all want to know what the replacement option is - Nicola Willis, Simeon Brown have been dragging their heels on this for six months now, it's not good enough."
Utikere also said it was lucky the ferry ran aground where it did and with not many on board, saying they could be discussing the story in a different tone if circumstances were different.
When asked about the fragility of the Cook Strait link earlier on AM on Monday, Transporting NZ interim chief executive Dom Kalasih put it down to "a bit of bad luck".
But he also agreed there was "a degree of good luck" when it came to the weather conditions and number of people on board. The Aratere, which can carry 600 passengers, ran aground 3km north of Picton with 47 people - most of whom were crew - on board.
"For Transporting New Zealand our focus is on dealing with the now," Kalasih said.
"Services are constrained, they're down to three-quarters, because one of the boats was always away on service and I think what's important now is we try and prioritise freight movements and we just keep the country going."
Kalasih admitted there would be pain sorting out the issues with the ferry operations, but the focus was on minimising that pain. He said Transporting NZ was working with agencies, including Bluebridge and Kiwirail, to do so.
"I think by-and-large there's a lot of trust across the whole supply chain, and whilst there might be one or two where this does raise an extra bit of concern, I think by-and-large we still trust our partners."
But the ferry ordeal capped off a horror week for New Zealand's transport infrastructure, after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's Defence plane broke down in Papua New Guinea.
Luxon, who was en route to Tokyo with a business delegation, was forced to catch a commercial flight. The business and media delegations travelling with him stayed behind.
And it wasn't just transport - there were mass power outages in Northland and Coromandel last week too.
