Bitter taste of boat tax

YOUR PIECE ON the Muldoon Boat Tax [ Boating, July 2015] brought back many bad memories for me. At the time I was running the mould shop at Sea Nymph Boats when it struck without warning. Managing director Kim Mcdell has already described the evening when it was announced – it was hectic with boats going out the door with no trailer lights and no rego plates.

The next day Kim told me to reduce the mould shop from a staff of 46 down to six. Who to keep and who to let go? It was a terrible time.

It was fortunate that Sea Nymph had recently set up some dealers selling Farr trailer-sailers in Australia as all orders for power boats were cancelled.

I had previously been sent to the Melbourne boat show, and selling our trailer-sailers there was successful, as our quality was far superior to the Aussie boats. However at the boat show following the Boat Tax I was visited on the stand by many New Zealand boat builders who had been forced to cross the Ditch to work. The upshot of this was a marked improvement in the quality of the Aussie boats. It was pretty obvious that our expertise had been exported over the Tasman. Their quality was up to ours and so selling was much more difficult.

Shortly before the Boat Tax was implemented, we had been awarded the Fletcher Challenge Award for helping disabled people, because a large proportion of our staff had come from the local school for the deaf and had proved to be excellent workers. Unfortunately, most of these were among the staff laid off.

Our sales of trailer-sailers increased over time and I faced the uncomfortable position of going cap in hand to some of these staff to see if they would come back. Luckily most of them did as there was little work in our field. I can’t recall building any power boats over the next 12 months.

It remains one of the nastiest, most evil pieces of government legislation that was ever inflicted on New Zealand workers and, for me personally, it was the hardest time of my working life. To say that I am bitter is an understatement.