Our Islands Need Ships, Our Workers Need Jobs

New Zea­l­and needs a bal­anced, effi­cient and afford­able trans­port sys­tem.

It must be safe, access­ible, envir­on­ment­ally sus­tain­able and flex­ible enough to meet the chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tury.

Our exist­ing inter­mod­al sys­tem is sys­tem­ic­ally unbal­anced.

A long-term over­em­phas­is on the road net­work and truck­ing has cre­ated an uneven play­ing field for coastal ship­ping and rail.

With freight tasks expec­ted to double in the next thirty years, we will face increas­ing pres­sure on truck drivers, road upkeep costs for tax and rate pay­ers, and the entire trans­port infra­struc­ture.

Work­ers and employ­ers oper­at­ing between two quake-prone islands must be able to trust in a reli­able set of trans­port options.

Factor­ing in New Zealand’s com­mit­ment to envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity and CO2 reduc­tion, we can­not con­tin­ue to expand private road trans­port to the det­ri­ment of oth­er, more car­bon effi­cient meth­ods.

Coastal Ship­ping

There is no trans­port meth­od more envir­on­ment­ally friendly or cost effect­ive than coastal ship­ping.

The Labour Party in gov­ern­ment must com­mit to mak­ing coastal ship­ping an integ­ral part of our nation­al trans­port strategy.

We also need great­er invest­ment in mod­ern rail trans­port, and ser­i­ous atten­tion paid to the work­ing hours and job con­di­tions of truck drivers.

It is high time pri­or­ity was giv­en to the strug­gling New Zea­l­and ship­ping industry. It needs an even play­ing field.

New Zealand’s tax, envir­on­ment and labour laws are not con­sist­ently applied to the glob­al ship­ping com­pan­ies that dom­in­ate our coasts, and work that legit­im­ately belongs to Kiwi sea­farers is instead car­ried out by for­eign crews passing through, often on low wages and appalling con­di­tions.

Either our mari­time laws must apply to all ves­sels trad­ing on our coast or a strategy must be in place to help domest­ic ship­ping com­pan­ies that employ NZ sea­farers of all rank­ings com­pete on an even keel.

Kiwi­Port

The Mari­time Uni­on has pro­posed the concept of a “Kiwi­port”, with a view that ports through­out New Zea­l­and should come under a coordin­at­ing struc­ture.

As vital parts of our trans­port infra­struc­ture, the future of these pub­licly owned facil­it­ies is too import­ant to leave to chance.

The 2018 Labour-led gov­ern­ment must do everything in its power to defend pub­lic own­er­ship of ports, and pro­mote ration­al, co-oper­at­ive and future-focused rela­tion­ships between them.

Des­pite the efforts of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to lock New Zea­l­and fur­ther into a fossil fuel depend­ent eco­nomy at a time of peak oil and cli­mate crisis, coastal ship­ping offers a ready-made solu­tion.

The regen­er­a­tion of a reg­u­lated domest­ic ship­ping industry would lead to the sta­bil­ity of region­al ports, provid­ing an altern­at­ive to the large ves­sel syn­drome pro­moted by glob­al ship­ping oper­at­ors whose arbit­rary changes to call­ing sched­ules have ports on the hop.

Ports could be put under loc­al own­er­ship and con­trol, but rather than being left to paro­chi­al com­pet­i­tion, they would have to oper­ate in an integ­rated frame­work.

A nation­al ports plan and Gov­ern­ment share­hold­ing could carry out port ration­al­isa­tion based on the pub­lic interest.

The sav­ings on waste­ful com­pet­i­tion between ports would be enorm­ous, and the trans­ition to hub and feed­er ports could be man­aged to ensure region­al ports were not dis­ad­vant­aged.

Ports would be oper­ated on a basis of facil­it­at­ing trade.

Methyl Brom­ide

There are ser­i­ous safety and envir­on­ment­al con­cerns around the use of methyl brom­ide as a fumig­ant in New Zea­l­and ports.

The com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al use of highly tox­ic sub­stances must only take place under strictly reg­u­lated con­di­tions, using the safest pos­sible meth­ods.

Methyl brom­ide expos­ure can cause ser­i­ous long-term health prob­lems.

It has been linked to brain can­cer and debil­it­at­ing neur­o­lo­gic­al dis­orders.

The most com­monly used pro­cess for post-fumig­a­tion gas dis­pos­al is cur­rently via release into the atmo­sphere, put­ting port work­ers and nearby com­munit­ies at risk of expos­ure to this taste­less, odor­less pois­on, and caus­ing ser­i­ous ozone deple­tion.

Port com­pan­ies and con­tract­ors must be required to employ meth­ods of gas dis­pos­al res­ult­ing in full recap­ture, in des­ig­nated areas designed for the pur­pose.

Work­safe and the Envir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Agency must invest­ig­ate to the full extent of their powers any exist­ing breaches of safety and envir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions relat­ing to methyl brom­ide, with fin­an­cial pen­al­ties where applic­able.

Exist­ing recap­ture tar­gets must be met with­in estab­lished dead­lines, and those respons­ible must be clearly des­ig­nated and held account­able.

Industry Train­ing Urgently Needed

Young Kiwis have the right to a career path­way and secure jobs in their own coun­try.

It is no secret the mari­time industry has an aging work­force, brought on largely by the lack of industry and gov­ern­ment sup­por­ted train­ing.

It is easi­er for the com­pany to employ a non-New Zea­l­and nation­al than it is to train work­ers here.

As trade uni­on­ists we are inter­na­tion­al­ists, and we sup­port mari­time work­ers from all over the world.

It is, how­ever, symp­to­mat­ic of a failed sys­tem when you see com­pan­ies fail­ing to invest to required levels in domest­ic train­ing pro­grams for young work­ers, and instead employ­ing for­eign sea­farers on low wages.

New Zea­l­and should imple­ment a pro­gress­ive quota sys­tem.

When you have unem­ployed New Zea­l­and sea­farers queuing up for jobs, any vacan­cies must be offered to them first, with wages and con­di­tions that entice people to go to sea.

Without industry reforms at a top gov­ern­ment level which provide a career path for our young and an even keel for NZ ship­ping, we will con­tin­ue to see the demise of New Zea­l­and ship own­ers and crews to pred­at­ory mul­tina­tion­al com­pan­ies.

The cur­rent Nation­al gov­ern­ment is hell bent on let­ting it hap­pen.

We need Labour to turn the ship around, before it’s too late.