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April 30th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The company says it’s using the MCP Kopenhagen to store the chemical as it doesn’t have the space or authorisation to keep it on land.
Orica is waiting for council approval of a storage facility at Denman in the Upper Hunter.
Maritime Union of Australia officials boarded the ship at the weekend and described conditions onboard as the worst they’ve seen in years.
The union’s assistant national secretary, Warren Smith, described what they found to 1233 ABC Newcastle’s Jill Emberson.
“The ship’s in an absolutely disgraceful state and some of the hardware on the ship was found to be defective,” he says.
“But the fact that you’ve got this complete, total disgrace of human rights where workers on the vessel were rationed 300ml of water a day, rancid meat, rotten vegetables, grossly underpaid crew.
“Now our concern is that in dealing with such a highly dangerous and toxic substance such as ammonium nitrate everyone needs to be on their game and every aspect of safety needs to be observed.”
Warren says Orica chartered the ship and bears some responsibility for ensuring the safety of such a dangerous cargo.
“When you’re dealing with an absolutely toxic substance, an explosive substance, that can have massive impacts upon the community then everything needs to be done to ensure that the operation’s run at the highest possible best practice of safety and that clearly hasn’t happened on this occasion,” he says.
Orica’s general manager Australia/Asia, James Bonnor, maintains that the people of Newcastle are “certainly not at risk”.
“The residents of Newcastle have nothing to fear as a consequence of this shipment,” he says.
“It’s the responsibility of the ship’s owners for the care of the crew on board.”
However James says Orica will be clarifying with the ship’s owners as to what the onboard conditions are.
He says the ship is only five years old, and when Orica chartered it the vessel had a five-star rating from the International Transport Federation.
And James says the Australian Maritime Safety Authority did a full inspection of the ship before it sailed, finding only relatively minor defects that were quickly rectified.
“We will certainly be talking to the ship’s owners around the conditions of the staff on that ship, we certainly don’t want them to be experiencing conditions that aren’t acceptable,” he says.
But the MUA wants the ship’s crew immediately replaced, saying they’ve been at sea for 16 months which is far too long even under good conditions.
Warren Smith says the crew notified union members on the wharves of their “dire” situation.
He says Orica should be using an Australian ship with an Australian crew, where it’s known the standards will be high, rather than a “flag of convenience” ship.
“They’ve made no effort to do that and Orica have got a long history of using foreign-flagged vessels,” he says.
James says Orica operates in 50 countries around the world so it does use foreign vessels, but always ensures the ships meet minimum standards.
And he says this particular cargo is not unusual.
“We ship product in and out of Kooragang Island on a regular basis so this shipment was seen as no different to any other shipment of ammonium nitrate that’s either being imported or exported from Newcastle,” he says.
The cargo will remain at sea for seven to 10 days before the ship returns to the harbour to discharge the ammonium nitrate.
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