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ACCC Mixed-Bag
Australia’s ACCC has released its latest container stevedoring monitoring report which highlights a mixed bag of impacts and recommendations
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2020-21 features an interesting mix of both unsurprising and surprising conclusions.
It is actually remarkable after over 18 months of living with the pandemic what can be categorised as “unsurprising.” The following all fall into this category:
Unsurprising
5 The negative impact of surging demand for containerised cargo and congestion throughout global supply chains generating severe disruptions and delays. 5 A major increase in vessels arriving outside their designated berthing windows. The ACCC reports one stevedore suggesting that only 10 per cent of vessels arrived in their designated berthing window during the 2020-21 period. 5 Freight rates today – late November 2021 – being around seven times higher than they were a year ago and ironically accompanied by a significant drop in service levels when measured against on-time delivery performance. 5 A resulting squeeze on the margins of Australian importers and exporters, “as they are all round the world,” says ACCC.
It is indeed a sign of the times that such exceptional events have come to be viewed as unsurprising. They are not just Australia’s problem but everyone’s problem – global disarray!
Of course, it is probably also fair to say in this respect that Australia is one of the world’s countries most dependent on extended supply chains and as such the disruption factors have the potential to be commensurately bigger. Additionally, the ACCC points out, that the supply chain disruption Australia has suffered from has been made worse by industrial relations issues and restrictive work practices.
“Industrial action on top of pre-existing congestion has unfortunately put enormous strain on our international container ports at a time when they can least cope with it…,” underlines Rod Sims, ACCC Chair. Indeed, the ACCC goes further voicing the belief, shared by many, that the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has recently used industrial action to push for restrictive work practices, including enterprise agreements, that limit the ability of stevedores to automate and make sensible recruitment decisions. As evidence of this it points to Hutchison Ports Australia’s enterprise agreement which requires 70 per cent of new recruits to be ‘family and friends’ of existing employees or people chosen by the MUA.
Is this surprising? Sadly, it falls into the unsurprising category…the MUA Has a long history of fielding an ‘us and them,’ as opposed to collaborative, approach to labour relations characterised by rigid inflexibility and demands that are entirely inappropriate to modern port working.
THE SURPRISES
So what in the ACCC Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2020-21 is surprising?
Giving credence to the findings of the recent study by the World Bank and IHS Markit definitely falls into this category. Many industry analysts and observers have looked at this ‘study’ and promptly concluded it is flawed. It cites Australia’s container ports as being relatively inefficient and as operating well below international best practice. It places Australia’s largest container ports, Melbourne and Sydney, in the bottom 15 and 10 per cent respectively of the 351 ports that featured in the study.
Australia’s container ports may not be in the top tier of the world’s most efficient ports but based on experience and global perspective alone they do not deserve to be categorised in this way.
The second surprising point made by the ACCC relates to the landside charges, better known as terminal access charges, applied by stevedores. These fees have been the cause of considerable controversy and have been slated by landside logistic interests, cargo shippers and notably the industry body Freight and Trade Alliance (FTA). The basic accusation is that the country’s stevedores are stepping up and widening the landside charges as an alternative to passing costs on to a consolidated shipping sector where competition for business is very strong.
Refreshingly, however, the ACCC does not go along with the contention that the charges are excessive. As Sims puts it: “At the current level of landside charges, stevedores do not appear to be earning excessive returns…”
A third surprising point – although doubtless not to some – is a call for more regulation of the container port sector and specifically as it relates to the country’s four major wholly privatised ports – Adelaide, Brisbane, Botany and Melbourne. It states there is a need to limit the privatised ports’ ability to impose “excessive rents and charges.” Certainly there is a need to establish a more level playing field in this respect but is it appropriate to do so post privatisation? This is an approach that swims against the tide in a privatisation context and the examination of other options appears at least worthy of some consideration.
8 The full ACCC Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2020-21 is available at: https://www.accc.gov.au/ publications/container-stevedoring-monitoring-report
8 DP World has
