Just as the Australian Government and most Australians had forgotten about the spectre of an Australian strategic fleet of cargo ships, we have been reminded of the ludicrous idea by an article emanating from the Illawarra bureau of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commune).
Presumably inspired by the Port Kembla branch of the blatantly self-serving Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), the ABC report advocates the establishment of a fleet that would have only one real beneficiary: that self-same union.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Australia’s recent and distant maritime history would be well aware of the reality that government ownership of shipping fleets always ends in economic catastrophe.
Take, for example, the recent appalling waste of public money caused by the clearly predictable ship acquisition disasters of Tasmania’s TT-Line Company. TT-Line is just another example of a shipping line established and continually massively subsidised by government for the primary benefit of the MUA.
There have, of course been several other examples. The Commonwealth and two other states have also wasted enormous amounts of taxpayer’s money over the past century or so. The first was then prime minister, W. M. "Billy" Hughes’ insane and illegitimate establishment of the Commonwealth Government Line of Steamers (CLS) commencing in 1917.
The CLS was liquidated with staggering losses in the mid-twenties. It should be remembered, too, that Hughes’ political career commenced in the Seamens Union, a predecessor of the MUA.
Over succeeding decades, and always with the best of intentions, the Western and South Australian state governments have put large millstones around the necks of their citizens with massive investments in and ongoing vast subsidies to support what were really just sheltered workshops for the maritime unions.
Tasmania, naturally, never learns. As well as the catastrophic TT-Line Company, it has also had the long-running saga of TasPorts and its predecessor company that actually saw two of its ships sunk in one year (1973/74).
It has been proved repeatedly, and not just in Australia, that governments make very poor ship owners.
Like Tasmania, the Commonwealth has twice dipped its toes, very expensively, into the boiling waters of ship ownership.
Undeterred by its expensive and embarrassing experience with the CLS, a quarter of a century later, it tried again with the establishment of what became the massive, and massively expensive, Australian National Line (ANL).
After forty years of expense and very small returns, Laurie Brereton, the then ALP government transport minister, exclaimed, “you couldn’t give it away,” as he disposed of ANL’s carcass. It has been proved repeatedly, and not just in Australia, that governments make very poor ship owners.
So much for the less than glorious history of Australian federal and state government ship ownership. The spurious argument put forward in the ABC article claims that, “a strategic fleet of Australian-flagged ships designed to strengthen the nation’s maritime resilience and provide vessels for crises, emergencies, or defence support,” would be invaluable, also flies in the face of recorded history.
That fleet, it is said, would be operated by civilian commercial crews – that is, of course, by the MUA. In any case, large bulk and container ships that carry out Australia’s shipping task would be practically useless in crises and emergencies. In the kinds of places where such crises and emergencies occur, such ships would be too big, their draughts would be too deep, and the cranes and other infrastructure required to unload them would not be available.
If there is ever another serious war, Australia will again have to rely largely on its allies for its shipping, as an Australian strategic fleet is extremely unlikely to be of any real use.
Even worse, wrapping itself in the “red duster” (the national ensign of civilian ships), the MUA dishonestly conflates its own, often treasonous, World War II history with those of its undoubtedly heroic counterparts in the British, American, Canadian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish and other free European merchant navies, for example.
In reality, when the MUA and its predecessor unions were not actively sabotaging the war effort, they were refusing to man ships supplying Australian troops fighting in New Guinea and Borneo. The ships supplying the actual war zone were largely American, Dutch and British (Hong Kong) flagged and officered with Asian crews. All of that has been well-recorded in several very reputable histories.
As the ABC article mentions, “there are (now) only nine Australian crewed private commercial ships”. And most of those ships serve on Bass Strait, where there is no option.
That is true but that is for the very good reason that no one in their right mind would invest in ships that would effectively be controlled by the MUA. The responsible minister and her cabinet colleagues would do themselves and the Australian taxpayers a big favour by studying the appalling history of Australian government-owned fleets.
Before throwing billions of dollars into yet another floating folly, they should also look very closely into the real wartime history of the MUA and its predecessors.
If there is ever another serious war, perish the thought, Australia will again have to rely largely on its allies for its shipping, as an Australian strategic fleet is extremely unlikely to be of any real use. It would quite certainly be a very expensive folly that would only be of any real benefit to the MUA, certain opportunist financiers and, of course, the liquidators who would inevitably be required to ultimately dispose of the fleet for the government.
Why bother?