Kaikoura slip shows the importance of coastal shipping

The run­down of New Zealand coastal ship­ping is threat­en­ing New Zealand’s capa­bil­i­ty to deal with the social and eco­nom­ic fall­out from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

A mas­sive slip near Kaik­oura has blocked the main road and rail link from north to south for the last cou­ple of days and it is not known for cer­tain how long it will take to clear and repair.

The cause of the slip is pos­si­bly relat­ed to the recent Christchurch earth­quake, or heavy rain, but regard­less of the cause, it is cre­at­ing extra prob­lems for trans­port and logis­tics in the bad­ly dis­rupt­ed South Island at a cru­cial time. Heavy trucks are divert­ed through the Lewis Pass, hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters off their nor­mal route.

KiwiRail is now con­sid­er­ing ship­ping freight to South Island ports oth­er than Pic­ton, to reach Christchurch faster.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the neglect of coastal ship­ping has led to a “blind spot” in New Zealand’s trans­port mix.

“We’re an island nation depen­dent on ship­ping that has allowed its own ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty to van­ish due to bad poli­cies, and we are see­ing now why this is a bad idea.”

He says the Mar­itime Union has argued for many years that over reliance on land trans­port and espe­cial­ly truck­ing was short-sight­ed.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly we have had lit­tle progress and the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment is only inter­est­ed in heavy truck­ing. We no longer have the coastal ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty to deal with the prob­lem.”

Due to New Zealand’s geog­ra­phy, reliance on land based trans­port modes run­ning down nar­row and eas­i­ly dis­rupt­ed trans­port cor­ri­dors was a dan­ger­ous weak­ness.

The Christchurch – Pic­ton road and rail link was the only con­ve­nient land route from North Island to the major­i­ty of the South Island’s cities and eco­nom­ic hubs.

Mr Fleet­wood says if there was a fleet of New Zealand ves­sels avail­able, they would be able to quick­ly respond to such a sit­u­a­tion if required, either for emer­gency relief or sim­ply to ensure the sup­ply chain was not bro­ken. There are only a very small num­ber of New Zealand freight ves­sels work­ing on the coastal trade.

Most coastal car­go is now dom­i­nat­ed by over­seas ves­sels which work to tight fixed inter­na­tion­al sched­ules based on the inter­ests of their own­ers, rather than any local con­cerns.

Mr Fleet­wood says that the con­cerns about a Welling­ton earth­quake were still extreme­ly valid.

“If we look at New Zealand’s cap­i­tal, it is total­ly depen­dent on a cou­ple of access routes, and if these were blocked, ship­ping might pro­vide the only life­line.”

The Mar­itime Union was call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to remove poli­cies which dis­ad­van­taged New Zealand ship­ping and includ­ed the “blue high­way” as a key ele­ment of the trans­port mix.