SRI has welcomed the recent announcement from the Australian government regarding funding for an Australian Strategic Fleet.
“This is a positive demonstration of the policies of a majority of countries around the world that have laws that regulate their maritime cabotage trades” says Deirdre Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of SRI.
In 2018, SRI published Cabotage Laws of the World which recorded that 91 States around the world have cabotage laws in place. The policy objectives underpinning these laws were found to be tailored to the specific national needs of different State but commonly included, for example: maintaining national security and defence capabilities through national merchant fleets; ensuring supply chain resiliency; providing essential public services where transport services might otherwise be disrupted by unforeseen events; developing human capacity and retaining skills in the national workforce; and creating jobs for national seafarers.
Deirdre Fitzpatrick further comments: “Five years after our first report was published, and after the experience of Covid-19 pandemic, we are now updating our report and we expect to find that certain concerns have been heightened amongst governments such as supply chain resilience. We also expect to find heightened concerns around national security and defense capabilities given the bipolar political and trading world that appears to be emerging. Cabotage policies and laws have existed in some form for centuries in some countries and are applied along the coastlines of about 80% of the world. They are ever evolving and we expect to find that this process of change is accelerating”.
