Government ports report narrow and biased

The Mari­time Uni­on has attacked what it describes as the “nar­row­ness of vis­ion” in yet anoth­er report into the state of New Zeal­and’s ports.
Mari­time Uni­on Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Joe Fleet­wood says the Min­istry of Trans­port com­mis­sioned Freight Futures report trav­elled down well worn paths and added little to the debate.
He says the latest report pro­motes a free mar­ket agenda that was now glob­ally dis­cred­ited and driv­en only by cor­por­ate self-interest.
Pos­sibly the intent of the report was to provide jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the con­tinu­ing “avoid­ance” approach of the Nation­al Gov­ern­ment to ports policy – which could be summed up by the words of the song “What ever will be, will be.”
Mr Fleet­wood says the new NZIER report repeats mater­i­al from the recent Port Per­form­ance and Own­er­ship report to the Loc­al Gov­ern­ment For­um, which rep­res­ents big busi­ness and private sec­tor interests.The report was biased against work­ers in the industry who it por­trays as a prob­lem, was hos­tile to pub­lic own­er­ship and had a “thinly veiled con­tempt” for demo­crat­ic insti­tu­tions like loc­al Gov­ern­ment.
Claims that New Zea­l­and port per­form­ance had been harmed by the Employ­ment Rela­tions Act were not accur­ate or backed with any sub­stant­ive evidence.Mr Fleet­wood says he is con­cerned that the real­ity of reduced pay and con­di­tions, con­tinu­ing health and safety issues, and the destruc­tion of career paths and secure jobs for young work­ers in the ports industry, were not covered by the report.
He says the reg­u­lar deaths and injur­ies of work­ers in the mari­time industry, includ­ing over­seas crews, showed a human cost to the so-called effi­cien­cies of the free mar­ket.
“They did­n’t put any­thing about that in the report though, as the lives and well­being of the work­ers in the industry do not seem to come into the equation.”“All it shows to me is that this is the usu­al blood­less and dry approach by people who have noth­ing to do with the industry and for whom short term profit is the only meas­ure of suc­cess.”
“The authors of this report obvi­ously have no under­stand­ing of how the increased usage of poorly trained and unskilled cas­u­al work­ers, and dif­fi­cult and unsafe work­ing con­di­tions on some older and smal­ler ships call­ing at our ports, can impact on these stat­ist­ics.”
The smal­ler size of New Zea­l­and ports was just one reas­on why so-called effi­ciency com­par­is­ons with huge glob­al ter­min­als over­seas was mis­lead­ing.
These “under­pro­ductiv­ity” argu­ments are rejec­ted by many in the industry, and Fonter­ra’s Gen­er­al Man­ager of Logist­ics Nigel Jones had pub­licly respon­ded to sim­il­ar claims in a pre­vi­ous NZIER report by stat­ing it was dan­ger­ous to look at issues such as crane pro­ductiv­ity in isol­a­tion, because ports were part of the sup­ply chain.
Mr Fleet­wood says as tax­pay­ers and wealth pro­du­cers, mari­time work­ers object to sub­sid­iz­ing reports by people who are remote from the every­day real­ity of our industry.
The Mari­time Uni­on has pro­posed an act­ive mari­time and ports policy rather than the fatal­ist­ic approach of the cur­rent Government.“We pro­pose ‘Kiwi­Port’ a nation­al ports plan, cab­ot­age for coastal ship­ping and the invest­ig­a­tion of New Zea­l­and invest­ment in ship­ping for our glob­al trade routes.“The growth of spe­cial­ist areas such as the off­shore industry also had the poten­tial for devel­op­ing a high skill industry, and needed to be factored into any mari­time policy.