The Australian shipping
industry has been drawing attention to the flagrantly anti-competitive
regime, which imposes costs on Australian shipping which foreign shipping
operating in Australia escapes.
The objectives for the industry include:
- ensuring that users of shipping can access cost-effective shipping
services
- ensuring that Australians operating in Australia's interstate and
intrastate sea transport industry are subject to the same regulatory
regime as that applied to foreign entities operating in the Australian
interstate and intrastate transport industry
- ensuring that Australians can participate in the global shipping
industry in a way that reflects world best practice in the world
shipping industry and that they can do so in Australia to the benefit of
the Australian economy
- ensuring that Australia's defence capability has access to a
merchant navy which is based on Australians who have been trained to
appropriate international standards in ship operations, ship management
and ancillary maritime skills
- ensuring that Australia's whole maritime infrastructure grows as a
result of removal of anti-competitive regulatory constraints on
Australian industry
- ensuring that the administration of the Australian interstate and
intrastate sea transport industry is fair and not open to manipulation
in such a way that cost efficient Australian shipping can be
marginalised.
The Australian shipping industry is growing more confident
that the Australian government is gaining a better appreciation of what
the industry is saying: it is not very complex. The industry is just
saying it should be given a fair go.
The industry is saying that if the Government is to be taken
seriously when it says that Australia's economic activity needs to be
internationally competitive, then it should remove or at least modify
legislative constraints that make it difficult if not impossible for
Australians to be internationally competitive.
