National strategy required for future of New Zealand ports and shipping

The Mar­itime Union says there needs to be nation­al lev­el plan­ning around ports and coastal ship­ping, oth­er­wise New Zealand is going to find itself in a bad posi­tion.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says there needs to be a stronger response to build­ing resilience into the sup­ply chain.

The Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Com­mis­sion has not­ed dis­rup­tions to glob­al sup­ply chain trends are like­ly to become more fre­quent with caus­es includ­ing pan­demics, war and cli­mate change.

Mr Har­ri­son says the Union is call­ing for polit­i­cal solu­tions includ­ing a port strat­e­gy and invest­ment in coastal ship­ping.

He says one prob­lem is how New Zealand ports are pri­mar­i­ly seen as income streams for own­ers, as opposed to nation­al infra­struc­ture that under­pins the suc­cess­ful func­tion­ing of the econ­o­my.

An exam­ple of lack of co-ordi­na­tion is the mul­ti­ple con­flicts around the future of the Port of Auck­land, he says.

“In the case of Port of Auck­land, we have major road­ing and rail projects being pro­posed at the same time as a pri­va­ti­za­tion agen­da and plans to shrink the port despite no clear alter­na­tive capac­i­ty – in oth­er words, total con­fu­sion.”

He says claims there can be a straight­for­ward relo­ca­tion of port activ­i­ties to North­port (Whangarei) or Tau­ran­ga are unre­al­is­tic.

“North­port does not even have a rail link at this stage, and Tau­ran­ga is oper­at­ing close to capac­i­ty. This sit­u­a­tion is not going to be resolved by high­way mega-projects that sim­ply move con­ges­tion around.”

He says with ongo­ing cli­mate-dri­ven weath­er events becom­ing more severe, pro­pos­als to sink more and more resources into road­ing projects shows a refusal to face facts. 

Mr Har­ri­son says there needs to be a strate­gic shift to build the role of coastal ship­ping.

He says New Zealand coastal ship­ping pro­vid­ed resilience that was demon­strat­ed dur­ing COVID and dur­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as earth­quakes or flood­ing, when region­al land links were out of action.

“For a frac­tion of the enor­mous price tag of mon­ster motor­ways, New Zealand could become a leader with invest­ment into low emis­sion coastal ship­ping, and cre­ate safer, less con­gest­ed roads.”

“The recent Gov­ern­ment invest­ment and result­ing growth in coastal ship­ping shows the poten­tial but there needs to be an inte­grat­ed ship­ping and ports pol­i­cy to build on this.”

He says that the Mar­itime Union is cam­paign­ing for changes to the Mar­itime Trans­port Act to pro­mote New Zealand ship­ping and mar­itime jobs.