Risk in ignoring history’s lessons

It is certainly bizarre to see the recent flooding that disrupted freight delivery to the Kimberley being used as a reason for more intrastate shipping.

But that’s what the union movement, in the form of the Maritime Union of Australia, is calling for.

Largely reliant on road transport from Perth, the Kimberley was left in the lurch when the Fitzroy River flooded earlier this year and washed out the main bridge on the Great Northern Highway, which provides access to much of the region east of Broome.

And it is not just in the state’s north that such risks lie.

The rest of Western Australia experienced similar problems when flooding severed the Nullarbor rail connection in recent years.

As former premier Mark McGowan found during the pandemic, WA’s isolation involves more than just distance. We have just two major roads into the state, thousands of kilometres apart, and a single rail line.

Clearly, therefore, it doesn’t take much to seal the land border.

There is no doubt that such supply line constraints create strategic issues.

So, why would this be bizarre?

Because road transport, most notably, has grown in the past few decades to replace shipping as a key form of intrastate transport, given the inherent risk in the use of maritime services.

If you think the danger of a one-in-100-year flood on road or rail transport seems like a risk to mitigate, imagine putting your supply line into a shipping service where the fleet and its sparsely located ports are subject to the whims of the MUA.

While there are good reasons to have shipping in the mix and, indeed, some resources companies have chosen such a pathway for the transport of their specialist equipment, the history of what used to be Stateships shows maritime transport is fraught.

As we all know, having seamen and wharfies paid exorbitant wages by the hour hardly incentivises those in that brotherhood to do their work efficiently.

That’s especially the case when there is no alternative to using them, thanks to strict rules that govern our commercial waters and the heavy-handedness of unions that dominate our waterfront.

By contrast, trucking services are subject to intense competition. As a result, truckies have proved significantly more efficient than domestic shipping which, along with our ports, are among the world’s most expensive (on paper).

Once the road network was established to the north the Stateships service, which involved state government-owned or leased ships, was doomed to failure.

“For the entire time we were last in government, we subsidised Stateships,” former state transport minister Alannah MacTiernan said in parliament in 2020, according to Hansard.

“I think it was around $2 million a year.

“It was not really a terribly effective service.”

The problem is, of course, that while many object to the dangerous and poorly paid conditions of seafarers who work on many international routes, Australian conditions are loaded towards the crew.

Just like the now-extinct Australian autoworkers, heavy unionisation and a propensity towards industrial action at every opportunity have all but priced Australian seafarers out of existence.

No business can afford to be held captive to the whims of people who know that they can extract a price just for doing nothing.

Australia has more-than-adequate protections for workers’ rights, safety and their ability to negotiate a fair price for their labour. While they may choose to join a union, they should not be forced to do so, which is effectively the case today.

When unions become the effective regulator of a sector it is doomed as soon as an alternative appears, as is the case with any monopolistic endeavours where cosy relationships mean the community ultimately loses out.

If the Fitzroy floods again, be it next year or next century, surely the state government can rent a foreign-flagged ship for six months to deal with the inconvenience.