Off the Radar

Iron Chieftain

"Shipping - unless it involves sheep, refugees or pollution - has long been well off the radar of newsroom chiefs of staff" -- Sandy Galbraith, Lloyds List DCN, October 9.

Two former ministers from opposite sides of the political spectrum (John Sharp and Peter Morris) released their Independent Report on Australian Shipping in October and one key recommendation was immediately taken on board by the MUA.

The IRAS report recommended that a wider range of occupations be represented in crews to cut maintenance costs. This was successfully used by the union to reach an agreement with ISM and CSL on the Iron Chieftain.

The IRAS report also recommended crewing vessels in international trades with both Australian and foreign ratings. This was unacceptable to the union. Any concept of a second register was rejected as well.

The Australian Ship Owners' Association point out that the use of foreign vessels to carry cargo is adding $3.1 billion a year to the current account deficit, and ignoring Australian seafarers amounts to around 14 per cent of our current account deficit.

Australian flag shipping only has 1.4 per cent of market share, with intrastate share of domestic transport fallen from around 40 per cent to 25 per cent in 15 years. Domestic shipping now only performs a third of interstate transport. And the fleet is down from 79 in 1994 to 54 in 2002. The gap between foreign flag and Australian flag vessels is between $2 million to $2.5 million according to IRAS.

Full report next MWJ