Spring, strikes and a river without ferries
Spring arrived in Australia on Tuesday. Queensland celebrated by turning up the thermostat.
Brisbane is expecting temperatures around 33 or 34 degrees over the weekend, while some inland towns will reach the high thirties. Apparently, this is not officially a heatwave, although several headlines have called it one. The Bureau of Meteorology prefers “unseasonably warm.”
The average September maximum in Brisbane is around 26 degrees, so “unseasonably warm” is about right.
Here in Hervey Bay, spring is often more of an administrative arrangement than an observable season. The calendar says winter has ended, the whales are still passing through, the birds are getting on with their nesting, and the temperature can do whatever it likes. We may enjoy a few pleasant weeks before summer barges in, although this year it seems to have arrived early and brought its luggage.
The weekend heat will coincide with one of Brisbane’s biggest outdoor events. About half a million people are expected to gather beside the Brisbane River to watch the fireworks and aerial displays that open the Brisbane Festival.
Many of them would normally travel on the CityCats and ferries. Not this year.
Members of the Maritime Union of Australia and the Australian Maritime Officers Union intend to stop work for 24 hours from four o’clock on Saturday morning. Last year, around 27,000 people used the ferries to attend Riverfire. This year, they will have to find another way to join the crowds.
The unions are involved in a long-running dispute with RiverCity Ferries over pay and working conditions. Negotiations have been going on since October last year, so this is not a sudden squabble manufactured for the occasion. The workers are entitled to seek decent wages and conditions, and they are entitled to take protected industrial action.
But choosing Riverfire day is wrong.
It has been chosen because it will cause the greatest possible disruption. That is the point, of course. A strike nobody notices is not much use as industrial leverage.
Unfortunately, the people most affected will not be sitting around the negotiating table. They will be families, visitors, hospitality workers and ordinary Brisbane residents trying to reach one of the city’s biggest public celebrations. Roads and other public transport will be even more crowded, and businesses expecting a busy evening may lose customers.
In other words, thousands of people who have no influence over the negotiations are being used as ammunition.
The unions may believe that public anger will force RiverCity Ferries and Brisbane City Council to give ground. Perhaps it will. But anger is not always directed where organisers would like it to go. Deliberately spoiling a major community event is an excellent way to lose public sympathy, even among people who might otherwise support the workers’ case.
So Brisbane will welcome spring with temperatures in the mid-thirties, half a million people gathering beside the river, and not a ferry in sight.
I shall remain safely in Hervey Bay, where the whales have more sense than to join a maritime union and the only industrial action on the water is an occasional bout of vigorous tail slapping.
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