August 27, 2009

The Mari­time Uni­on has a mes­sage for the Gov­ern­ment: instead of jail­ing New Zeal­anders in con­tain­ers, it would be bet­ter to have them work­ing on the con­tain­ers by rebuild­ing coastal ship­ping.

Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins announced today a “con­tain­er unit” will be set up at Rimu­taka Pris­on to house sur­ging num­bers of pris­on­ers, the latest embar­rass­ing step in New Zeal­and’s fail­ure to con­front the real issues behind crime.

Mari­time Uni­on Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Tre­vor Han­son says New Zea­l­and work­ers have been forced out of mari­time employ­ment in their own coun­try by allow­ing over­seas labour to be exploited on the New Zea­l­and coastal waters.

He says that due to the “open coast” policy intro­duced by Nation­al in the 1990s New Zea­l­and had seen its ship­ping industry taken apart, while many oth­er coun­tries reserved their domest­ic mer­chant ship­ping and fish­er­ies for loc­al industry.