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Blue Wedges challenges PoMC CEO Stephen Bradford to provide the names and specific draught restrictions of the 218 ships which he claims left Melbourne in the three months to September carrying less than their full capacity due to draught restrictions. Unless we have more detail about Mr. Bradford's claim, it deserves to be dismissed as merely an attempt to bolster the quickly deflating popularity of the Port's channel deepening project. See: 'Port a lightweight for shipping' Business Age Monday October 23rd at http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2006/10/22/1161455608700.html.

The Port has been fluffing around with such data for a number of years now. Although all Australian ports are required to provide such data to the Commonwealth Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics ‘Waterline’ Journal, our members were unable to obtain such detailed information when researching our EES submission in 2004.

Mr. Bradford claims that trade is bouncing back. If so, why so much catastrophising about the need for channel deepening? And - his other figure of 178,000 containers handled in August is also mis-leading - how many of these were empty containers brought into the port and out again or were double handling; that is trans-shipments to Tasmania for example? 

It appears to be common practice for ports worldwide to report their import and export figures including empty containers (see Containerization International's latest edition).  – This practice inflates the reported trade figure (useful for corporatised ports) and certainly assists PoMC’s catastrophising.

With imports growing at a much faster rate than our exports, the number of empty boxes moving through the port is increasing whilst the number of Australian manufacturing jobs decline. A sorry tale and one which the channel deepening project will further assist and emphasize. The following figures on numbers and empty and full boxes (TEU’s) through Melbourne July- December 2005 underscore that growing trend. (Source  CommonwealthGovernment publication - Waterline May 2006 edition)

Total TEU's exchanged    July-Dec 2005

Full import                456,345

Empty import             51,035

Full export                330,003

Empty export            149,346

TOTAL:                    986,729 - This total figure is used as TRADE, but includes trans-shipment, double handling import and export.

What it does show sadly is that we are running a big export trade in empty boxes. Do we really need deeper channels to move more empty boxes?

More rigorous data please Mr. Bradford.