Ports of Auckland gives us resilience

By Rus­sell Mayn

Sec­ret­ary, Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Auck­land Branch Loc­al 13

The floods in Auck­land and the north­ern regions have left people shell shocked. Our largest city has been hard hit by the heav­iest rain­fall on record. As well as the imme­di­ate human cost, the ongo­ing eco­nom­ic effects will be severe.

It is now appar­ent that things aren’t going back to nor­mal, ever. Fol­low­ing on from the pan­dem­ic, we now are find­ing out what cli­mate change means in real terms.

We need to start plan­ning for what things are going to be like, not what we hope they would be. Our sup­ply chains and trans­port sec­tor are cent­ral to our response.

So what can be done?

Our trans­port industry needs to get onto a new tra­ject­ory imme­di­ately. We need resi­li­ent sup­ply chains that can with­stand severe dis­rup­tion.

There has been a push to shut down or phase out the Ports of Auck­land. We now need to reflect on the advant­ages of hav­ing a loc­al logist­ics hub that can func­tion even in extreme weath­er events.

If Auck­land was depend­ent on Marsden Point as its key gate­way port, what hap­pens when con­nec­tions are severed by flood­ing?

The May­or has pushed for car imports to be removed from the Auck­land water­front almost imme­di­ately.

We now see many main roads through­out the region dam­aged or impass­able. Bypass routes are not suit­able for heavy traffic.

Marsden doesn’t even have a rail link yet, and even if it did, we see from the recent washout and derail­ment at Te Puke that rail is vul­ner­able too.

We can’t afford to have sup­plies in and out of our biggest city depend­ent on remote hubs that may sud­denly become inac­cess­ible.

The Ports of Auck­land needs to remain as a work­ing port to build our resi­li­ence.

Going back, the Port of Lyt­telton played a key role in the after­math of the Christ­ch­urch Earth­quake and the recon­struc­tion pro­cess. It was access­ible when land based links were out of action.

The “blue high­way” of domest­ic ship­ping links means that even in times of dis­aster our pop­u­la­tion centres and import­ant regions can be ser­viced.

There needs to be redund­ancy built into our sup­ply chains. We have to spread the freight task over dif­fer­ent modes and give pri­or­ity to low emis­sion, resi­li­ent trans­port such as coastal ship­ping.

It also requires a nation­al ports strategy which recog­nizes ports as essen­tial infra­struc­ture, as opposed to cash cows for loc­al author­it­ies. Ports need to be work­ing togeth­er as opposed to pur­su­ing paro­chi­al interests.The con­cern of the Mari­time Uni­on is there have been dec­ades of nation­al para­lys­is when it comes to deal­ing with these issues. It was left to the mar­ket to decide, or rather a few ves­ted interests. The res­ult is not good. We are now run­ning to catch up.

There is pro­gress in some areas, such as coastal ship­ping, which has gone through a recent resur­gence due to sup­port­ive Gov­ern­ment policy set­tings.

But in oth­er areas, we are still locked into an out­moded mind­set in a rap­idly chan­ging world.

For example, how were over­seas oil cor­por­ates allowed to shut down Marsden Point refinery, leav­ing us less pre­pared and less resi­li­ent in a volat­ile glob­al situ­ation?

After the pan­dem­ic, the sound­bite from the trans­port industry was that “just in time” had become “just in case.”

We are in danger of slid­ing back into com­pla­cency.

It was only a mat­ter of time before a weath­er event like this occurred. There will be more.

The fantasy of the glob­al free mar­ket is dead and bur­ied. Dereg­u­lated cap­it­al­ism is driv­ing us towards social and envir­on­ment­al col­lapse, yet is not deliv­er­ing for work­ing people whose essen­tial work keeps the sys­tem func­tion­ing.

New Zea­l­and needs to urgently focus on get­ting the basics right. Our infra­struc­ture needs to be pre­pared for ongo­ing crises.

Late last year, the Gov­ern­ment announced an inquiry into New Zealand’s eco­nom­ic resi­li­ence to sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions. This will need to keep up with dis­rup­tions that are now hap­pen­ing in real time.

There needs to be a fast shift to low emis­sion trans­port modes. Cli­mate change, pan­dem­ics and war are going to be ongo­ing fea­tures of the world in the future, not one off excep­tions.

We will need resi­li­ent loc­al freight hubs as part of this new situ­ation. Ports of Auck­land needs to stay.

This art­icle was first pub­lished in the New Zea­l­and Her­ald on 3 Feb­ru­ary 2023