Pilots and port professionals of all kinds gathered in Wollongong yesterday to thrash out the big issues in the industry at the Australasian Marine Pilots Institute’s Australia’s Maritime Future Conference.
Sustainability was the big overarching theme for much of the first session, with speakers touching on what their organisations are doing in the space.
In the keynote address Port Authority of NSW chief operating officer John Finch spoke about recent projects at the port authority and discussed plans for future pilotage operations in the state.
One possibility he discussed was plans to boost emissions reductions by building electric pilot cutters.
Ports Australia policy and operations director Margaret Barbouttis then gave an overview of sustainability initiatives in Australian ports.
Newcastle pilot Ricky Rouse spoke about the place of marine pilots in an automated future.
“We’re a lot closer to automation than you might think,” he said.
And Svitzer Australia head of innovation David Bartnik gave a very detailed overview of the company’s data capabilities, which can estimate the carbon dioxide emissions from an entire ship movement, not just the tugboat’s emissions.
Subsequently, Nautical Institute president Jillian Carson-Jackson spoke about human capital in maritime. She used group activities to illustrate the concept. She said human capital is important, multifaceted and should be invested in.
“We need to prioritise human capital investment,” she said. “It is critical for productivity.”
Maritime Industry Australia CEO Teresa Lloyd gave a detailed summary of MIAL’s proposal to “rebuild the industry in Australia”. She said there are 13 Australian flagged ships that are able to trade internationally, with four of them due to depart for good in the coming two years.
“Things are becoming less stable, the world is becoming more fraught and were becoming less and less capable of looking after ourselves,” she said.
“We have an industry that is getting deeper and deeper into a hole, from which we need to extract ourselves.”
Through regulatory changes and cutting red tape in the Coastal Trading Act, Ms Lloyd said an environment could be created, “a landscape in which we can have ship ownership in this country, and it’s about being competitive”.
