By Paul Clough, Solicitor  

In the late 18th century, Charles Dickens wrote of conditions in Paris and London in “A Tale of Two Cities”. France was in the throes of beheading their royalty and England was seeking to exploit the unrest to further its military empire.

Recently, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Hon Anthony Albanese, embarked on a 21st century recitation of one of the two transport systems in Australia that he is responsible for. The world scene is enthralled with global considerations: the global economy, the global financial crisis, the Doha round of free trade agreements. His ministerial control of the aviation industry completes a tale of two systems.

It is a given that the developed world, Western Europe, North America, and parts of Asia are into manufacturing, export oriented and, to a large extent, wealthy and largely peaceful. The undeveloped world is rife with wars, famines and poverty.

Australia is part of the developed world and wealthy. For the first half of the 20th century, Australia was protectionist in its trade outlook. Today we have embraced the global market place. Milton Freedman is triumphant. The concomitant is that ordinary Australian industry is no longer cost efficient. The wages paid to Australian workers is infinitely higher than to those in China or India and most of Africa. We have outsourced our textile, footwear, metal and heavy industry to overseas. We are left with wine production, primary produce and quarrying minerals. ‘General tariff protection’ are dirty words.

The services that transport all exports and all imports are shipping by sea and air. In short two, transport systems. Each of them has parallels in the ADF as the RAN and RAAF. Enter the Hon A Albanese from left field with his reasoning to keep one of these two systems afloat on a raft of overpaid frontline staff. The good minister recounts that 99 percent of our exports are carried by ship. In 1996 there were 55 Australian trading vessels shipping 3.2 million tonnes but by 2008 there were only 30 remaining vessels shipping 1.8 million tones. In summary, less than half a percent of our export trade is carried in Australian crewed ships.  After a short blame game against the long departed Howard government, the Hon A Albanese comments that the leading shipping nations such as Japan, China, Britain and Denmark are protecting their fleets with tax incentives and “policies” to keep their fleets competitive whilst our fleet is in freefall. It begs the question, “is not general aviation also in freefall”?

As our exports are expected to triple in the next two decades, something must be done to protect our seagoing fleet and our Australian seamen’s jobs. The Americans, on the other hand, protect their maritime fleet by ensuring that all US flagged ships must be built in the U S of A and crewed by Americans. The Americans justify this blatant protectionism on the grounds of security. It must be said that the aviation industry is also an Australian security asset. The Hon A Albanese favours taxation protection benefits to foster Australian seafarer employment. The 2008 Defence paper  proclaims the following ‘motherhood’ statements: “increasing our workforce of skilled seafarers is essential for the industry to grow”;  “we need a focus group to devise education funding for seamen training”; “a skilled maritime workforce is in the national interest.” A significant seamen workforce will enhance maritime capability by the ADF. Environmental issues are also called in aid of this protectionism and the Shin Neng 1 is cited as sloppy seamanship. The final point made by the good minister is that, “without reforming our shipping sector, we risk becoming nothing more than customers of others.”

All well and good. Let us go down the protectionist path to ensure jobs for Communist unions on the water and the water front. Now let us look at the aviation industry. No protectionist motives are advanced to coddle the pilots and engineers. They must take their chances in the global economy.

The Hon A Albanese is a member of Cabinet that approves the continued sale or closure of airfields in and about Australia. Obviously, training aircrew and engineers would be a valuable human asset in times of international conflict for the Australian Defence Force. There are less and less airfields in Australia to develop this time-consuming skill in potential pilots and engineers. There is no focus group charged with the task of developing educational skills for pilots and engineers. There is no HECS scheme for pilots as there is for lawyers and doctors. Pilots primarily have to pay for their flying training in artificially expensive aircraft and engineer apprentices have to struggle to get a start in the industry. CASA is hell bent on enforcing the most inane regulations to the point of driving experience from the industry. The ADF now use civilian training establishments to outsource that part of defence flying.

If the civil industry declines further, pilots will be brought in from the Asian area to crew training and airline aircraft as the industry languishes. Recently, a union pilot in Jetstar was either dismissed or threatened with dismissal for voicing this risk of poorly trained foreign pilots being given visas to fly in Australia on airliners. If nothing is done to actively foster aviation training and development in Australia we will, in the words of the Hon A Albanese,“risk becoming nothing more than the customers of overseas airlines.” The Hon A Albanese’s whole article reeks of hypocrisy, mendacity and obsequiousness, when applied to aviation rather than maritime shipping.

In the real maritime world, it is obvious that the RAN cannot stop a few leaky poorly navigated refugee smuggler boats but merely escort them to an over-peopled Christmas Island. On the other hand, the airline industry can provide immediate and speedy responses for the uplift of stores, ammunition and troops into areas behind a front line provided there are airfields. Revisit Darwin during the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy. Who was to the fore when floods inundated Central and Southern Queensland over the Christmas New Year? It certainly was not ocean-going cruise ships and freighters but helicopters from the GA industry and Army Blackhawks. It seems the civil maritime industry cannot exist without heavy protectionism in the form of taxation rebates or subsidized training education. Aviation is loaded with excessive special taxes and must accept the reality of the market. Little wonder that very few airlines exist after 40 years operations in Australia.

Perhaps that union pilot representative is not a member of a communist or at least a left-leaning union. Had he been a member of the left wing seamans’ union he would have been afforded a respectful hearing and a policy mooted for protection of his industry. There are no tax advantages for airlines. In fact, they are slugged with all of income tax, company tax and the “user pays” taxes to fund airport security, CASA, ATSB, FAA, ASA.

In the “Tale of Two Cities” the main male character, when travelling in the tumbrill to meet Madam Guillotine, commented to a fellow condemned, “It is a far far better thing that I do today than I have ever done”. Hon Athony Albanese’s comments on seamen’s future when considered against the average pilot’s future and the wider aviation industry’s future, indicate that he is not interested in doing “a far far better thing” but rather his comment for the aviation industry could be “Vive the Marketplace and the devil take the hindmost”.   

Watch this space…