The one good thing is that they failed to take it private. Imagine how bad it would be with the current maintenance backlog and no public funding.
Now rail is just a nightmare moneypit. But older voters love rail "it's efficient" so the government panders to them and wastes more expenditure on it.
Edit: Currently for every $1.50 tax income from road user taxes and petroleum taxes: $1 is spent on roads, and 50 cents is spent on "rail". Crap. Rail is paid for by cars but is mostly waste.
My native Sweden had an amazing rail network as well, we even made our own locomotives, but unfortunately it has also been neglected, though not as bad as in Germany.
Don’t diss rail, it can be great.
New Zealand is largely coastal so ships mostly beat rail. The 3 largest cities have their own ports. Cook Straight separates the South Island from the North Island, which complicates rail down South (apart from the Kaikoura Earthquake totally stuffing it). We don't do many bulk goods (unlike Australia which loves mining).
NZ overall has much less dense population - e.g. Auckland has insanely more urban sprawl than Zurich.
Sweeping statements about rail are a problem here (especially if incorrectly comparing against other populous or landlocked countries), and the biased love of rail makes for wasteful expenditure.
Auckland: ca. 1000 people/km² in 30km radius
Zürich: ca. 800 people/km² in 30km radius
People severely underestimate how sprawly Zürich is.
Our politicians are involved with a very large money pit for a ferry between the islands: railcars being a VERY expensive requirement (I think because terminals for rail require much more engineering). It's a mess.
Passenger numbers start rising before privatisation, and that was attributed to an uptick in the economy (after a period of recession).