Complete overhaul of NZ shipping policy required following Rena sentencing

The Mar­itime Union is call­ing for a com­plete over­haul of New Zealand ship­ping pol­i­cy to avoid a repeat of the Rena dis­as­ter.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the main prob­lem is that New Zealand des­per­ate­ly needs a ship­ping pol­i­cy.

Mr Fleet­wood says the jail­ing of the Rena’s Mas­ter and Mate was a case of attack­ing the symp­tom but not the dis­ease of dereg­u­lat­ed Flag of Con­ve­nience ship­ping (Edi­to­r­i­al note: see more infor­ma­tion about Flag of Con­ve­nience ship­ping below).

“The approach for the last gen­er­a­tion has been for Gov­ern­ment to abdi­cate its respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure stan­dards in the mar­itime indus­try.”

As long as Flag of Con­ve­nience ship­ping was giv­en a “free ride” in New Zealand waters, Rena style inci­dents were “almost guar­an­teed”.

“The sur­pris­ing thing is how long it took for a ship­ping dis­as­ter of this type to hap­pen, not that it did hap­pen.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment this week passed Ship­ping Reform Pack­age bills to regen­er­ate Aus­tralian owned and Aus­tralian crewed ship­ping.

New Zealand, by con­trast, was still locked into failed dereg­u­la­tion poli­cies from the 1980s.

“Do we need more Rena style dis­as­ters to get the same action on mer­chant ship­ping in our waters?”

Mr Fleet­wood says the rein­tro­duc­tion of cab­o­tage (giv­ing pri­or­i­ty to New Zealand owned and crewed ship­ping) was now back on the agen­da fol­low­ing the Aus­tralian devel­op­ments.

He says that it was extreme­ly dis­turb­ing that a mar­itime trad­ing nation like New Zealand was now com­plete­ly depen­dent on glob­al ship­ping lines and Flag of Con­ve­nience ves­sels.

“We need a New Zealand ship­ping line to ensure our mar­itime and eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty.”

There were a num­ber of oth­er basic changes that could be eas­i­ly made to rapid­ly improve safe­ty in the indus­try, such as the manda­to­ry use of ded­i­cat­ed ship­ping lanes, which could have pre­vent­ed the Rena dis­as­ter.

Greater reg­u­la­tion of ship­ping was required to mon­i­tor fatigue, safe­ty stan­dards, and the con­di­tion of ves­sels.

“The crew are under enor­mous pres­sure for faster turn­arounds from the own­ers. In this envi­ron­ment, errors and bad judge­ment will con­tin­ue.”

Increas­ing the lia­bil­i­ty on the own­ers and char­ter­ers of ves­sels was obvi­ous­ly required.

The Mar­itime Union had also lob­bied the Gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly to the Rena Dis­as­ter for the pro­vi­sion of a quick response ves­sel to assist for ship­ping or off­shore oil and gas indus­try emer­gen­cies.

Mr Fleet­wood says the dereg­u­lat­ed and “tox­ic” com­pe­ti­tion in the entire mar­itime indus­try was respon­si­ble for many prob­lems in ship­ping and ports.

He says the recent moves to remove for­eign flagged char­ter ves­sels from the New Zealand fish­ing indus­try were an acknowl­edge­ment of the cri­sis in the wider mar­itime indus­try.

The changes had vin­di­cat­ed a long run­ning cam­paign by the Union to get the fish­ing indus­try cleaned up.

The prob­lems expe­ri­enced with Flag of Con­ve­nience ship­ping in New Zealand waters had many sim­i­lar­i­ties, and had to be dealt with in the same way.

Mr Fleet­wood says the Mar­itime Union wel­comed the grow­ing polit­i­cal sup­port for New Zealand ship­ping from oppo­si­tion par­ties.

What is Flag of Con­ve­nience (FOC) ship­ping?

A flag of con­ve­nience ship is one that flies the flag of a coun­try oth­er than the coun­try of own­er­ship.

Cheap reg­is­tra­tion fees, low or no tax­es and free­dom to employ cheap labour are the moti­vat­ing fac­tors behind a shipown­er’s deci­sion to ‘flag out’.

Some of these reg­is­ters have poor safe­ty and train­ing stan­dards, and place no restric­tion on the nation­al­i­ty of the crew. Some­times, because of lan­guage dif­fer­ences, sea­far­ers are not able to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with each oth­er, putting safe­ty and the effi­cient oper­a­tion of the ship at risk.

In many cas­es these flags are not even run from the coun­try con­cerned.

Once a ship is reg­is­tered under an FOC many shipown­ers then recruit the cheap­est labour they can find, pay min­i­mal wages and cut costs by low­er­ing stan­dards of liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions for the crew.

Glob­al­i­sa­tion has helped to fuel this rush to the bot­tom. In an increas­ing­ly fierce com­pet­i­tive ship­ping mar­ket, each new FOC is forced to pro­mote itself by offer­ing the low­est pos­si­ble fees and the min­i­mum of reg­u­la­tion. In the same way, ship own­ers are forced to look for the cheap­est and least reg­u­lat­ed ways of run­ning their ves­sels in order to com­pete, and FOCs pro­vide the solu­tion.