Transport plan a chance to rebuild coastal shipping

The Mar­itime Union wel­comes the Government’s trans­port pol­i­cy, which was released today, as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to restore New Zealand’s coastal ship­ping indus­try and repeal sec­tion 198 of the Mar­itime Trans­port Act, says Mar­itime Union Nation­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood.

“The Mar­itime Union has a five-point plan to rebuild New Zealand’s ship­ping indus­try. The Government’s pol­i­cy pro­vides a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for the indus­try to grow and to car­ry more freight and gain the ben­e­fits avail­able through trade and eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty. 

“This is a good start and now a law change is required to restore hun­dreds of jobs.

“The Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic has shown how vul­ner­a­ble we are as a coun­try with for­eign owned and oper­at­ed coastal ships car­ry­ing New Zealand car­go. 

“If we don’t repeal Sec­tion 198 of the Act the dereg­u­la­tion impacts will con­tin­ue to place our coun­try at risk. 

“The dereg­u­la­tion that destroyed New Zealand’s coastal ship­ping indus­try needs to be dealt with now.

“In 1996 there were 34 New Zealand owned and oper­at­ed ships car­ry­ing goods between New Zealand ports. Today there’s just a hand­ful. 

“We’re an island nation that depends on trade, but pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments have stood by while our ship­ping indus­try has been smashed.

“MUNZ sup­ports the Government’s plan to invest in coastal ship­ping to embed mode neu­tral­i­ty and choice for freight trans­porters, to allow New Zealand flagged coastal ship­ping to oper­ate on a lev­el play­ing field with the big inter­na­tion­al ship own­ers. 

“Since the indus­try was dereg­u­lat­ed in the 1990s, coastal ship­ping has been the neglect­ed arm of New Zealand’s trans­port net­work. Even in this plan, coastal ship­ping, which car­ries 13% of domes­tic freight, gets less than 0.1% of trans­port fund­ing. 

“The need for a strong domes­tic coastal ship­ping fleet has only been strength­ened by the COVID cri­sis, which has shown we can’t rely on big inter­na­tion­al lines to ser­vice our region­al ports.

“Restor­ing pro­tec­tion for our coastal ship­ping will allow the indus­try to grow, give it the capac­i­ty to car­ry more freight, and pro­tect our abil­i­ty to trade dur­ing times of cri­sis,” says Joe Fleet­wood. 

The five-point plan to rebuild our ship­ping indus­try

1. Dis­cour­age unfair com­pe­ti­tion by tak­ing back the New Zealand ship­ping indus­try from for­eign oper­a­tors in our coastal trade. 
2. Allow a fast-track depre­ci­a­tion allowance and dis­pen­sa­tion from GST on the pur­chase of new ships, to encour­age local shipown­ers to rebuild our coastal fleet. 
3. Encour­age port com­pa­nies to elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary com­pe­ti­tion between them­selves, to devel­op an effi­cient, inte­grat­ed nation­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem. 
4. Include ship­ping ser­vices in the Clos­er Eco­nom­ic Rela­tions (CER) agree­ment with Aus­tralia, incor­po­rat­ing the rights of New Zealand and Aus­tralia to rans­port coastal car­goes in their own reselles. 
5. Rein­state New Zealand flagged coastal ship­ping by remov­ing all ref­er­ences to for­eign ships being able to car­ry goods along the New Zealand coast from sec­tion 198 of the Mar­itime Trans­port Act.