Maritime Union welcomes growing political support for coastal shipping

The Mar­itime Union has wel­comed Green MP Sue Brad­ford’s strong sup­port of Coastal Ship­ping in Par­lia­ment this week.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says he sup­ports Ms Brad­ford’s view pre­sent­ed in her State­ment to the Prime Min­is­ter that there needs to be some major Bud­get announce­ments to kick start the Coastal Ship­ping indus­try.

“We are con­fi­dent that the new Min­is­ter of Trans­port Annette King appre­ci­ates the issues, and is work­ing togeth­er with the Greens, Unions and indus­try to get progress on ship­ping, and we look for­ward to the con­crete results as soon as pos­si­ble.”

The Mar­itime Union ful­ly endors­es Ms Brad­ford’s analy­sis that ship­ping is the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly form of trans­port­ing goods, yet the New Zealand ship­ping indus­try has been dev­as­tat­ed by free mar­ket poli­cies that have only ben­e­fit­ed transna­tion­al ship­ping com­pa­nies.

Mr Han­son says coastal ship­ping is back on the agen­da with the growth in aware­ness and con­cern about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of trans­port.

“It is sim­ply crazy that at a time when ship­ping is vital­ly impor­tant to our future, New Zealand ship­ping has been forced by bad laws in a bat­tle for sur­vival against glob­al oper­a­tors who con­trol our des­tiny as a trad­ing nation.”

He says New Zealand could drop the ball unless a New Zealand ship­ping indus­try is rapid­ly built up that can deliv­er goods to mar­kets in a cost effec­tive and envi­ron­men­tal­ly low impact way.

“What we need is a com­plete and inte­grat­ed pol­i­cy that sets the future struc­ture and long term direc­tion of the mar­itime sec­tor, includ­ing a ratio­nal co-ordi­nat­ed ports pol­i­cy and a ship­ping pol­i­cy, that puts the needs of New Zealand indus­try and the pub­lic inter­est first.”