Maritime Union agrees with freight industry concerns on profiteering

The Mari­time Uni­on has taken the unusu­al step of agree­ing with a truck­ing industry boss.

Main­freight man­aging dir­ect­or Don Braid has said glob­al ship­ping lines are prof­it­eer­ing off the fal­lout from COVID-19.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Craig Har­ris­on says the com­ments are accur­ate.

“New Zea­l­and is depend­ent on glob­al ship­ping lines whose interests are not the same as New Zealand’s.”

He says the effect of COVID-19 on the sup­ply chain has exposed how vul­ner­able New Zealand’s trade links are.

Mr Har­ris­on says ongo­ing issues with sup­ply chain con­ges­tion, missed ship calls to ports, and extreme surges in the cost of freight, are caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age to the eco­nomy.

He says the fact that Main­freight are now char­ter­ing ships to move cargo inter­na­tion­ally was a major devel­op­ment and illus­trated a change in think­ing.

“The entire glob­al logist­ics sys­tem is broken, and now we need to focus on new solu­tions that provide secur­ity and reli­ab­il­ity.”

Mr Har­ris­on says the Mari­time Uni­on is push­ing for New Zea­l­and-owned and oper­ated coastal ship­ping.

This would provide feed­er ser­vices between main “hub” ports and smal­ler “spoke” ports.

Inter­na­tion­al ves­sels are per­mit­ted to carry domest­ic freight between New Zea­l­and ports – but in the cur­rent situ­ation, port calls are being missed as a res­ult of ship­ping lines hav­ing oth­er pri­or­it­ies for their sched­ules.

Mr Har­ris­on says there needs to be a nation­al ports strategy where invest­ment and plan­ning is based on nation­al require­ments, not paro­chi­al com­pet­i­tion between ports.

“The only people bene­fit­ing from the cur­rent chaos are glob­al ship­ping com­pan­ies.”