Coastal shipping should be used in emergency relief effort

The Mar­itime Union says New Zealand coastal ships should be part of the relief effort to bring sup­plies to regions dev­as­tat­ed by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says there are sev­er­al New Zealand flagged coastal ves­sels capa­ble of deliv­er­ing spe­cial­ized 20ft fuel con­tain­ers to ports such as Gis­borne or Napi­er.

These fuel stor­age units are cur­rent­ly shipped from New Zealand to sup­ply fuel to the Pacif­ic Islands.

Mr Har­ri­son says New Zealand coastal ships can also deliv­er “reefer” (refrig­er­at­ed) con­tain­ers and stan­dard con­tain­ers, and use onboard cranes if required.

“These ves­sels have the abil­i­ty to uplift the heavy machin­ery and goods required in the rebuild and bypass the bro­ken road and rail net­work.”

He says many of these New Zealand flagged and crewed ships have only recent­ly come into ser­vice on the New Zealand coast due to recent invest­ment in coastal ship­ping by this Gov­ern­ment.

Mr Har­ri­son says if emer­gency accom­mo­da­tion in iso­lat­ed region­al cen­tres was over­whelmed, there is noth­ing to stop a Cook Strait fer­ry from being tem­porar­i­ly relo­cat­ed to a region­al port to pro­vide shel­ter and cater­ing facil­i­ties.

He says it is unfor­tu­nate that inter­na­tion­al fuel com­pa­nies chose to remove New Zealand coastal fuel tankers in 2022 when Mars­den Point refin­ery was closed.

“If the oil com­pa­nies had retained one of the ves­sels, we would have the option for a New Zealand flagged ship to divert to a region in need and act­ing as a float­ing fuel stor­age facil­i­ty.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the sit­u­a­tion in Gis­borne and Hawkes Bay shows how exposed New Zealand’s fuel sup­ply and gen­er­al sup­ply chain is, both in the cur­rent short term emer­gency and for the recov­ery peri­od.

He says it is essen­tial to build resilience into New Zealand’s trans­port net­work by max­imis­ing the use of New Zealand coastal ship­ping.