Published: 16 Mar 2016
The Maritime Union of Australia has called out Lindsay Partridge’s trumped up claims it cost twice as much to ship a brick from Perth to Sydney, than all the way from Spain.
It comes as the peak body representing Australian ship owners confirmed no Australian ship even plies the trade.
MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin dismissed the Brickworks chief executive as a Liberal Party stooge who’d do anything for his own political self interest.
“This guy’s about nothing else except blowing his own trumpet for the Liberal Party,” Mr Crumlin said.
“It’s just another case of bashing up an Australian industry.
“ICAC was looking at this bloke - he’s got the credibility of Bart Simpson for goodness sake.”
In 2014 Partridge infamously told ICAC it was hard to keep track of money donated to the Liberal Party, comparing it to giving a hot chip to a bunch of seagulls.
Maritime Industry Australia chief executive officer Teresa Lloyd has also disputed Partridge’s claims.
“It seems like an extraordinary claim to make given that there’s absolutely no Australian ship that actually does that trade,” Ms Lloyd told the AM radio program this morning.
“If he was interested in shipping his bricks from Perth to Sydney, he would be doing that on a foreign ship anyway.
“So if the foreign ship owner is charging him that much to move his bricks around the country I’d say he is being ripped off.”
When asked by the reporter if this was his own campaign or part of some broader political one, Mr Partridge was evasive.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: “You've worked with the Coalition previously on things like the carbon tax, but is this the company's own fight?”
LINDSAY PARTRIDGE: “Well we're part of Manufacturing Australia and it's a problem that all manufacturers in Australia are facing.”
“The Senate rejected the Coalitions plans to deregulate Australia’s coastal shipping and now the government is wheeling out its lackies one by one, making demonstrably false claims to try to sink an important national industry,” Mr Crumlin said.
“They should be focusing on protecting Australian jobs.”
