Copy of a letter to the Editor of the Courier Mail, Australia. Published with permission from the author.
FROM: Stuart Ballantyne, CEO of Sea Transport Corporation, Australia
SIR:
I note with disappointment the reports and editorial about the oil spill from 'Pacific Adventurer' (Courier Mail, March 14).
Spurned on by other agendas, we have heard angry rhetoric from politicians keen for a job next month, and the delusionary Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engines (AIMPE) union who are alluding that Australian crews would not cause such spills.
All of them screaming for tough penalties, even jail, and I agree!
Just as soon as we can also lock up every truck driver that has had a spill, every garage and DIY that has tipped waste oil down the drain, every housewife that pours old cooking oil down the sink, and every other person that has hosed pollutants off their driveways into the road drains.
For the remaining dozen people, they can hold the keys to this big prison
Go check the facts and you will see that 85 to 95 percent of sea pollution comes from the land.
As in Hussein's deliberate pouring of crude oil into the Persian Gulf and the Braer disaster in the Shetlands, where the huge volumes caused the greens to cry doom, it all disappeared in a very short space of time.
Accidents will continue to happen in all forms of transport. The marine industry is a minor offender and continues to address improvement, but listening to the weeping and wailing by the interviewees, we should have jail sentences for bad acting!