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.