Michael Phillips, a former Chairman of Shipping Australia and the former managing director of the Australian arm of ship agency Hetherington Kingsbury, writes about the Port Hedland Voluntary Buy-Back Scheme Charge on shipping:
Dear Sirs
I would like to think BIMCO and other associated bodies will also be taking up the cudgels over this matter.
Does this mean the whole of Port Hedland will also be closed (residential, commercial, the Hospital, Hotels, Motels etc) and will all be relocated to South Hedland?
There is a lot more than housing in the Port!!!
Frankly I really don’t think the Minister really understands Terms of Trade let alone the repercussions of what is proposed.
They just see a ship floating in the ocean, which is an easy target and blithely assume somehow the owners, charterers and whoever else is responsible for operating the vessel can put out their hands and receive the extra cash to pay the WA Government.
I assume they will bill the agents who expected to collect and pay.
Good luck on that one, especially if the agents are not collecting funds up front.
This also adds extra costs to the ore (as realistically I cannot see the miners reducing their present income to subsidy this tax), thus ore becomes more expensive and then creates another problem with major customer: the Chinese!!
Hopefully SAL will ramp up the pressure on this ill-conceived proposal.
Regards
Michael Phillips
