I would like to take a minute and ask you to imagine a scenario where a countries OWN GOVERNMENT is ripping apart a major industry and essentially giving it away piece by piece to other countries and their big corporations and the public are just blankly watching it happen. What would you do if you lived in that country? I would like to think that you would stand up and say hands off our industry, our jobs. Well guess what you do live in that country because it is our own Australian government doing this.
The industry that my husband is employed in and is a huge part of our everyday lives is the maritime industry and it’s being ripped apart. I could bore you with all the dry facts and figures for hours about what the government and its bodies are doing with the different legislations, long term leases and others things but they are easy to look up if you’re really interested. Instead I would like to put a real face to the issues, make it personal show the far reaching effects of what’s going on.
All the seafarers I know are starting to get concerned about the future of their jobs. It has been getting harder and harder in the last year to find work as more Australian ships are being taken off their routes and replaced with foreign ships and crew. After all why pay award wages to fully trained safe Australian crews when our own government will turn a blind eye and in some cases help a company to employ workers from overseas who will work for considerably less. My heart breaks because some of these guys at sea know no other life and have been working on ships since before they were old enough to drive so how are they supposed to find other work outside the industry.
We need to start paying attention to what is going on around us right now. It isn’t just the livelihood of a seafarer and their family that these attacks endanger it is all of us. I want to put to you a story about a fictional ship called The Aussie that docks in a fictional average Australian town called Faith that is built around its local port to try and explain what I mean.
Faith is like most towns built around a port in that the port and its operation is a major source of income for the people that live there. It might be that you work at the airport where crew that don’t live in the area fly in to to join the ship or fly out of to get home to their family once they pay off. You might run a little boutique shop that seafarers call into along with tourists to buy fun local things to take home for their family or you might own the company that’s job it is to take the rubbish and biological waste from off the ship once it’s docked. The financial hit businesses take in ports where Australian crew has been replaced with foreign crew is unbelievable. Foreign crew are lucky if they get paid $2 an hour so they have no money to put into the local community even if they wanted to.
Now The Aussie who is an Australian crewed ship and has been working along the Australian coast for many years visiting the same ports each time she does a run including the town of Faith. When she is in port the crew of The Aussie like to go ashore and have a break from being on the ship. You have to think these guys and of course girls are sometimes spending a week or more without being able to get off the ship and put feet on land and because they are paid a decent wage in accordance with Australian standards they are able to afford to go ashore and have that break. It may be something as simple as having a drink at the pub with workmates or catching up with friends they have made in the port from other times they have docked there. Crew members might go shopping and pick up something for their kids or spouse from the shops, maybe do something to pamper themselves like a massage you just never know. These ships are a 2nd home to the crew so they have to go shopping for normal things like toiletries, books, magazines you know stuff to make their cabins comfortable as close to home as they can. Individually each person may not spend much money each time they are in but when you are talking about 3, 4, 5 plus ships coming and going every couple of days with 40 or more crew members each ship those dollars quickly add up. All that is lost when you start bringing in underpaid crews.
Faith could be any town anywhere in Australia that is built around a port and with this being an island country there are plenty of towns just like that. The examples I’ve given today about how ships coming into port are just the surface of how it impacts the community. I could spend the next few days going into all the ways that these attacks affect not only the seafarers of this country but all of us.
Something I personally am getting worried about is rumors that I have heard regarding foreign ships regularly coming into port with no waste because they throw it overboard on the way into port so the company doesn’t have to pay to have it carted away and disposed of properly. I say rumors because I don’t work on the wharfs or the individual ships to say whether it is fact or not but I am hearing of this happening from all different sources. Where do you think that rubbish ends up? I’ll tell you it ends up washing up on our beaches and clogging up our environment. We are a country that makes major money out of tourism and who wants to come to a place that has garbage filled beaches. This is another reason that I am concerned about foreign crews.
Australian crews on board ships have to undergo rigorous training and ongoing recertification as the years go by with their career. I remember very clearly the 3+ months that hubby had to go to a specialized Maritime college and the following months that he spent on ship finalizing his training and finishing off countless assignments before he could be fully certified. I can’t say that crews from overseas have to undergo the same rigorous training. Are they fully up to date with how to in a worse case scenario clean up a spill if the ship runs aground lessening the environmental impact or the protocol if a crew member falls overboard or gets hurt? English is the universal language spoken at sea and it is supposed to make things easier for navigation purposes especially if you need to be guided into a port with very little leeway either side but what happens if you don’t understand the language and can’t speak it? Link 1 for an example.
Then the fact that just to walk on the wharf to be able to get off and on the ship sailors have to undergo a complete and in-depth background check including criminal history periodically to make sure they are not a danger to this country. With acts of terrorism on the rise how safe do you feel with ships and crews from other countries docking in out ports that do not have to undergo the same checks as our Aussie guys? We don’t know with these ships who are accessing our ports and their past history so how can we be sure that they don’t pose a threat to our national security? With the Australian government thinking it’s perfectly fine to quietly and nearly totally under the radar lease our ports to corporations without looking into a company’s political affiliations the situation is only going to get worse. How safe do you feel with a port that is in close proximity to one of our key defense bases being in the hands of another country knowing this? For information on the checks Australian seafarers go through see link 2.
People please you need to realize that the fights the maritime industry are facing are not just to save this countries shipping industry but it is also to save your way of life and protect your safety. Your livelihood is in danger also because once they have stripped us bare who are they going to come after next? What happens to our national defense if we have no control over who accesses our ports and borders in this time of heightened terrorist attacks and needless violence?
Link 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Drake
Link 2. https://infrastructure.gov.au/transport/security/maritime/msics/
Some other links you might find useful to read if you are interested in this ongoing situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5emAEcMG44&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
http://www.mua.org.au/anthony_albanese_stands_shoulder_to_shoulder_with_sacked_mv_portland_workers
http://www.itfseafarers.org/focs-to-seafarers.cfm
An Anchor In Port 