YET MORE questions have been raised about TT Line’s procurement of the new Spirit of Tasmania ro-paxes following allegations of ‘creative accounting’ by Finnish builder Rauma Marine Constructions.
As stipulated in 2001 by TT Line’s owner, the Tasmanian Government, $100 million of the total cost of the new vessels was to be spent on Tasmanian and Australian content. $20 million of this would come from TT Line while RMC was/is responsible for the rest.
This was widely seen as a sop to the Tasmanian electorate after the government went through a protracted process – heavily criticised by the former TT Line chairman, Michael Grainger (DCN 9 October 2024) – to examine whether the ships could be built locally.
In December last year it was revealed that classified under the ‘local spend’ were Apple iPads, whitegoods, furniture, safety and electronic equipment, which qualified because it had been sourced from local sellers even though not of Tasmanian or Australian origin.
This week it has emerged that builder RMC has included the cost of the most expensive components of the ships – the eight Wärtsila main engines (four for each ship) – in the ‘local cap’ by buying them through Wärtsila Australia, even though they are built in Finland.
Wärtsila has been the system supplier for the ships’ power production and fuel processing systems which, as well as the main engines, includes three auxiliary engines and the LNG portion of the fuel system including Type-C LNG tanks.
Swedish specialist ferry/ro-ro/passenger publication SHIPPAX – which has produced a special supplement on Spirit of Tasmania IV, available to download for free – notes that the vast majority of equipment, materials, componentry and expertise has, logically enough, been sourced from a cluster of trusted RMC suppliers located within 200 km of the yard.
But TT Line says RMC may be subject to penalties if the local content spend is not legitimately met, and the actual cost of the Wärtsila equipment is “a commercial arrangement between RMC and Wärtsilä”.
“RMC has until the end of the warranty period of Spirit V to satisfy the local content provisions of its contract,” a spokesperson said. “Following this, we will undertake an assessment process to validate these purchases for contractual compliance, with penalty provisions in place.”
Tasmanian Labor leader Dean Winter called the revelation “another lie from a government that has completely bungled this project” and “doesn’t pass the pub test”.
“If RMC hasn’t delivered the local content that they signed up to, well they should be held to account for that,” Mr Winter said. “It appears RMC has got nowhere near their local content requirements.”
