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.”