Judge’s comments on shipping take the wind out of MUA’s sails

A judge has issued a damning assessment of the nation’s shipping fortunes.

A judge has issued a damning assessment of the nation’s shipping fortunes, declaring the industry “internationally uncompetitive” during a Federal Court battle between the maritime union and the Turnbull government over the fate of the crew of Alcoa’s MV Portland cargo ship.

Judge Steven Rares declared it a “commercial reality” that Australian “wage rates (were) making Australian shipping … internationally uncompetitive” while presiding over a full bench Federal Court hearing of the Maritime Union of Australia’s case against Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss yesterday.

Justice Rares added that “we have lost our shipping industry — whatever little we had, it’s gone down … your client’s acutely interested in that”, directing the interjection towards the MUA.

The union was arguing on technicalities that the decision to issue a licence allowing aluminium giant Alcoa to sail Australian waters with a foreign crew was invalid. The MUA has said Alcoa wanted to replace the MV Portland with a foreign ship, the Strategic Alliance, paying crew “as little as $2 an hour”.

The judge’s comments echo the view among ministers that Alcoa’s continued trading in Australia was vitally important to the national economy.

The Australian has obtained a letter from the MUA to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development saying the licence issued to the Strategic Alliance will “result in the redundancy and unemployment of our members who until now have been employed working on the MV Portland, operating almost exclusively on coastal trade routes between Western Australia and Victoria for over a quarter of a century.

“To put it starkly, the grant of this application will instantly result on (sic) the termination of 34 full-time, good quality taxpaying local jobs that currently operate the MR Portland without incident.”

The MV Portland crew has refused to sail the ship to Singapore to be decommissioned, despite a Fair Work order on the MUA to cease industrial action.

The Senate voted down proposed legislation that would open up Australia’s port-to-port shipping industry to more foreign-flagged vessels.