LETTERS | Labor’s pipedream of a national shipping fleet

In your website, I came across the editorial piece from November 2022 titled The Australian government’s maritime madness. It felt so good to me to see someone else writing in 2022 about something I ranted about in the late 70s and early 80s.

As a member of the old Merchant Service Guild (which at that time also seemed to have Communist Party Card-holding senior executives, who referred to members as “Comrade”) and when I was on leave, I attended branch meetings here in Brisbane. Noel Shepherd was the Secretary then and quite a fine man. However, at the meetings I would stand up and berate the members about their apparent sole motivation: to get higher salaries in the then-award system. I argued that we were paying around 60 per cent in tax and we should have been trying to get non-taxable benefits like I had had in Texaco and other non-Australian companies. I was always shouted down as a “scab”.

I would tell the guild members that we were a dying breed because shipowners could not afford us, including BHP and Millers and Howard Smith, and that the number of ships flying the Australian Red Ensign would reduce dramatically. At that time (late 70s-early 80s), I think we had more than 200 Australian ships.

Whenever I came back on leave, I would discover that the fleet numbers had kept dwindling until I returned in 1991 and we were down to the tens of ships. This gradually kept reducing until the embarrassing sale of ANL. I felt the guild, the competing Institute of Engineers, the SUA (later MUA) and union movement and, perhaps the federal governments (of whatever colour) failed to see the economics and act appropriately.

Even today, Australian corporations such as miners in NW Australia may be operating large bulk carriers under open registers.

During my early days after my return to Australia, I did write and was interviewed by media such as The Australian, about encouraging a ship operation system that favoured Australian officers but nothing happened. Even at conferences I helped conduct for the MLAANZ and NI and Company of Master Mariners, I stayed on this same soapbox but to no avail. I even talked at some length about mirroring the move towards the autonomous Ship Register in Hong Kong – to which I did contribute some of my efforts – which happened on December 3, 1990. I would talk about the very favourable tax situation we helped set up in Hong Kong (which was also adopted by Singapore) that attracted shipowners rapidly to the Hong Kong double flag. Nothing happened.

So, this sudden, perhaps union-based upsurge of an ALP pipedream for an Australian fleet may also be of no avail. Let’s see.

Capt Norman Lopez FICS

Brisbane

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