Harre takes on ports dispute

The long-running dispute about loading logs at South Island ports is now in the hands of a Government minister who earlier turned out in sympathy with picketing watersiders.

With Labour Minister Margaret Wilson on an overseas trip which will take most of June, her Alliance associate, Laila Harre, is Acting Minister of Labour.

It will be up to her to decide what to do about a plea from the Waterfront Workers Union for a Government inquiry into the issues.

The latest flare-up in the dispute, in Bluff at the weekend, had its sequel in the Invercargill District Court yesterday when five men faced charges of disorderly behaviour arising from a demonstration in support of a watersiders' picket.

Carter Holt Harvey's chief operating officer, Jay Goodenbour, said the protest at Bluff, where demonstrators lay down in front of vehicles carrying workers, had been "a nuisance more than anything else."

Nevertheless, he said, the company was looking at whether the cost of a resulting 35-minute delay should be added to the damages case filed against the union after earlier pickets.

Carter Holt Harvey was also considering whether to widen the injunction it had previously obtained banning waterside union members from disrupting loading to include the individuals in the weekend protest at Bluff.

"It is," he said, "an interesting game of cat and mouse we are playing here.

"They appear to have found a way around the ban on disrupting loading. We are now looking at what we can do in response."

Waterfront Workers Union national secretary Trevor Hansen said the flare-up at Bluff showed the issue was not going to go away.

"Negotiation, mediation and the courts have all been tried and haven't worked. We don't see there's any alternative left apart from a Government inquiry or an industry conference."

Veteran mediator Walter Grills, who spent several months in an unsuccessful effort to bring the parties together, recommended in his final report that there should be a Government inquiry into the impact of the port reforms of the late 1980s.

Mr Hansen said the union would "dearly like the Government to pick that up."

Margaret Wilson has previously indicated that she would consider calling a ports conference but has yet to comment on Mr Grills' suggestion.

Her office said that since she would be out of the country for the next few weeks, the matter was now one for Ms Harre, as acting minister.

Ms Harre stirred controversy by visiting a watersiders' picket in Nelson in March, though she said she had given them a "moderate" message and had mainly emphasised the Government's hope that the dispute would be "settled in mediation."

No comment was forthcoming from her yesterday on whether the Government would agree to the suggestions of an inquiry.