Scott Base rebuild under scrutiny as costs soar

Saturday, 23 March 2024

The three-building design of the redeveloped Scott Base may not survive scrutiny from the coalition Government.

Antarctica New Zealand is racing to reduce its Scott Base redevelopment, even as the coalition Government has signalled the rebuild budget could be cut amid “serious concerns” about the project.

On Friday, Antarctica NZ was working to keep the project within a $498 million budget, with the funds already being held by the organisation, chief executive Sarah Williamson said.

But Antarctica NZ may get only the “budget that was originally agreed” - or $262m - Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told Parliament on December 7.

A Treasury spokesperson confirmed to The Press on Friday that Cabinet has the power to take allocated funds back.

Also speaking on Friday, a spokesperson for Peters said: “Decisions relating to the project and its current budget envelope require further detailed policy work and Cabinet decisions.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters examines a mock-up of the proposed Scott Base in 2019. He’s responsible for Scott Base because Antarctica is outside New Zealand.

The coalition Government had “serious concerns” about the Scott Base redevelopment and was looking into the “situation with urgency”, Peters said.

“We also have questions around Antarctica New Zealand's management of the project,” Peters said. There had been “terrible waste”.

In late February, Peters announced that Antarctica NZ board chairperson Sir Brian Roche had resigned, and been replaced by entrepreneur, diplomat and one-time McMurdo Station kitchen hand Leon Grice.

Heather Simpson - Helen Clark’s long-time top adviser - was also appointed to the board to fill a vacancy.

Most of the current Scott Base dates to the 1970s and 80s.

“These appointments are one of a series of remedial steps that the Government is taking to bring the project under control,” Peters said.

The fracas comes as the coalition Government has asked departments to slash costs, layoffs have hit ministries, school lunches have been cut and other austerities imposed.

By last September, Antarctica NZ had concluded it couldn’t build a base for $498m and commissioned a working group of external and internal experts to consider options.

Its heavily redacted report was released by Antarctic NZ last week and the preferred option appeared to be reducing the number of new buildings at the base from three to two, while also repurposing the most modern building at the base, called the Hillary Field Centre. It was built in 2005 and upgraded in 2016.

The “Antarctica factor“ raises constructions costs substantially, says Sarah Williamson, chief executive of Antarctica New Zealand.

Other parts of the base date back to the 1970s and 1980s.

The working group also considered flat-packing components into containers for shipping to Antarctica, using traditional building practices at the site or having the base built overseas.

Inside the Hillary Field Centre, a modern place for staging field trips, storing materials and holding meetings.

In December, the Antarctica NZ board asked for some of these ideas to be refined and costed to ensure “they are within the overall project budget as agreed in Budget 2023” - or $498m.

In Parliament in December, Peters was answering patsy questions put by one of his backbenchers about Scott Base.

Peters was ready with answers and rhetoric. He twice used the language about the “originally agreed” budget. He put his boot into the former Labour Government, which couldn’t “run a corner dairy” and doubled Antarctica NZ’s budget “just like that”.

When announced in 2019, the budget was $262m, Peters said. The Labour-NZ First Government agreed to contribute about $200m and Antarctica New Zealand was expected to raise about $50m itself.

The pandemic and soaring construction costs led the Labour Government to increase the budget to $344m in 2021 and an additional $154m was added in 2022. Along the way, the fundraising was dropped.

Staff and scientists listen to a science talk in the bar at Scott Base.

About $81m had been spent to June 30, 2023, and more since, on design of the new base, enabling works at the site, relocation of science experiments, and large purchases such as heavy plant and wind turbines, Williamson said.

“This is a technically complex project,” she said. “Antarctica is one of the most extreme and remote environments in the world. The ‘Antarctic factor’ adds considerable costs to the project that you would not see in a New Zealand build.”

An upgraded wind farm had also been added to the project, she said.

Few doubt that New Zealand must have some sort of base in Antarctica.

“New Zealand's polar science is held in very high regard around the world [and] in a global warming world we need polar science like we've never had before,” said Colin Monteath, who has worked across Antarctica for 32 seasons, 10 at Scott Base.

“The bottom line is we have to have a good science hub, which can still be spartan,” said the author of a new book on Mt Erebus.

“They should just be making better use of the buildings they’ve got,” said Lars Brabyn, a University of Waikato geographer who has visited Scott Base 10 times.

The Hillary Field Centre was a “perfectly good building” that would end up in a Christchurch landfill if the original plan was carried out.

Antarctica NZ is not the only polar nation facing base redevelopment problems. Before Covid, the US Antarctic Program planned to demolish dozens of buildings at McMurdo Station, a few kilometres from Scott Base, and replace them with six large structures up to three storeys high.

The budget was US$400m (NZ$615m) and another US$200m was probably needed.

Post Covid, that’s been dialled back to a new accommodation hall and a vehicle maintenance building. Meanwhile, a construction project at the American base at the South Pole was dropped entirely.