Editor Lyndon Keane says whether it’s competition or, as Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch has suggested, a State Government sell-off of Sea Swift, something needs to be done to urgently address the wet season freight delays and costs that continue to cripple Cape York and the Torres Strait. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
The same can be said of the government or government-owned entities, especially when they quack on with identical lines about an issue causing daily detriment to the residents and business operators of the northernmost part of the state.
I’m talking, of course, about the freight crisis that seems to worsen each wet season, and getting the State Government, politicians and the operator with the monopoly on the northern high seas to admit they are at least partially to blame.
The facts are that the State Government owns 100 per cent of Sea Swift, which is managed by the $68 billion Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) on behalf of the Queensland Government Insurance Fund (QGIF), the state’s self-insurance scheme. The government paid a reported $300 million for the company in 2019, yet trying to get anyone in Brisbane to acknowledge the state doesn’t have its fingers deep in the Sea Swift pie is nothing short of infuriating.
If you need proof the sea freight company and the State Government are effectively one and the same, you only have to look at the verbatim response I got from executive chairman Chris Pearce and one of our political types when I asked about ownership. In separate responses, both told me Sea Swift does “not receive regular” government funding “for services, training, crew, vessels or operations”. Surely the identical wording is just an uncanny coincidence, right?
In in the interest of transparency, I should mention here Sea Swift is an advertiser with this masthead. Well, it was, and it remains to be seen whether that continues after the powers that be read this editorial. Newspaper editors criticising advertisers used to be the absolute taboo of media land, and it’s probably more so now, with revenue becoming increasingly difficult to come by for regional publications, however, I’ve seen the first-hand impact wet season freight dramas are having on our communities and it’s time to get our elected leaders to pay attention. Biting my nose to spite my face, perhaps, but what cost can you put on a situation crippling the social and economic growth of a region already struggling to remain relevant in the eyes of government?
The solution to the embarrassing annual situation is, as Cook MP David Kempton has pointed out, a complex, multifaceted one, however, I reckon we could do a lot worse than having a bit of wet season freight competition while we continue banging the tin in Brisbane and Canberra for the funding needed to get the Peninsula Developmental Road to the point where road transport isn’t off the table as an option for as long each year.
As it stands, there’s no incentive for the government-owned Sea Swift to do anything about what one Weipa business owner described as “monopolistic price gouging”. The more money the company makes, the more money can be funnelled back through QIC to the QGIF. The better Sea Swift does, as with all commercial operations managed by QIC, the better the State Government’s self-insurance coffers. Commercially, it makes perfect sense, but does the situation strike anyone else as just a teeny weeny conflict of interest when it comes to addressing remote cost of living pressures on Cape York and in the Torres Strait?
No one in this part of the world is being fooled by the political spin, subterfuge and arm’s length assertions.
Whatever the path to freight options that don’t cripple the region is, a handy first step would be the government waddling towards an admission it could do something about the farcical situation as the sole owner of the monopoly operator, if only it wanted to.
