Coastal shipping must complement rail and road

The Mar­itime Union says the Government’s announce­ment today of major invest­ment in rail is a pos­i­tive move, and is urg­ing more action on coastal ship­ping.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the Government’s approach of long-term invest­ment was the cor­rect one and showed vision for the future.

“For decades, trans­port pol­i­cy has been dom­i­nat­ed by short-term think­ing and vest­ed inter­ests. We now have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to move towards an effi­cient, inte­grat­ed mul­ti-modal trans­port sys­tem for the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

The inte­gra­tion of dif­fer­ent trans­port modes around New Zealand ports was an urgent require­ment.

Mr Har­ri­son says the ben­e­fits of a low car­bon foot­print and sup­ply chain resilience are strong fac­tors in favour of coastal ship­ping.

He says revi­talised coastal ship­ping on the ‘blue high­way’ would com­ple­ment rail and road, link­ing region­al ports with inter­na­tion­al car­go hubs.

“Coastal ship­ping is the miss­ing part of the jig­saw in our trans­port mix.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to rebuild­ing New Zealand coastal ship­ping, and it need­ed to keep up the momen­tum by act­ing soon.

Key reforms required were chang­ing the Mar­itime Trans­port Act to pro­vide a lev­el play­ing field for New Zealand ship­ping against glob­al oper­a­tors, and train­ing and devel­op­ment for a mar­itime work­force.