Seaworks joins the wannabe navy boat building club

By Jock Anderson

Friday 26th July 2002

Bill Day

Former entrepreneur of the year Bill "I'm no socialist" Day is the latest to shmooze the government for a piece of the navy's $500 million ship replacement project.

His Wellington-based Seaworks company is in a partnership bid with Auckland-based International Marine services, Grayson Engineering, Danish industrial group's Danfoss New Zealand and Jim Anderton golden boy Bill Lloyd's Sovereign Yachts.

A first-choice plan is to build the proposed new modular vessels on former defence force land at Hobsonville, near Mr Lloyd's controversial Sovereign Yachts base.

Danish trade commissioner Hans Peder Wagner said then the programme would create 500 sustainable jobs as the 60m offshore composite-sandwich-hulled boats would be fully built at Hobsonville and accelerate the move into mega-yacht construction.

Mr Lloyd's fast-tracking into Hobsonville by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development Mr Anderton raised a flurry of political protest and media conjecture that saw Mr Lloyd reaching for the Defamation Act.

Mr Day's membership of the joint-venture bid was disclosed this month, hard on the heels of newspaper reports that the vice-chairman of the Business Roundtable would vote Labour - reports Mr Day later said were incorrect.

Hitting back at newspaper reports he was voting Labour Mr Day said he was not a socialist but supported Finance Minister Michael Cullen because he was a conservative voice within the Labour Party in terms of restraint on spending.

Mr Day also expressed surprise he had been named in Parliament by Mr Anderton as receiving a $100,000 government business-growth grant.

Official MED figures showed the payment was made but Mr Day emphatically denied that he or his company received it.

Clouding the issue was a claim by one of Mr Day's Christchurch mates, Roger Beattie, who said Mr Day told him he had got $100,000 from Mr Anderton and put it in the bank - something Mr Day said was absolutely incorrect.

"I got no money," Mr Day said.

Act New Zealand sources said Mr Day told an Act meeting in March that Mr Anderton's officials kept offering him money for his business that he didn't want or need.

An MED official said Seaworks applied for a business- growth grant about March or April last year to pay for the design and development of a tool to assist the laying of fibre-optic cable underwater.

Funding was approved but never paid out and the official said that after about six months the Seaworks file was marked "cancelled."

Mr Day said the underwater tool would have been useful if Seaworks had won a tender it was keen on but it didn't get the tender so there was no need for the tool.

The MED official was puzzled by Seaworks' inclusion on Mr Anderton's list and said there was no evidence on the file that any money had been paid to Seaworks or Mr Day.

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