A PANEL session at the Ports Australia Biennial conference has noted geopolitics and the rapid pace of technological change as key future influences on ports.
The session, chaired by Port of Melbourne chief executive Saul Cannon, featured DFAT assistant secretary trade and investment economics Kyle Naish and Infrastructure Australia chief executive Adam Copp.
Referring to the previous biennial conference in Hobart in 2024, Mr Cannon said the world at that time already felt “unusually unsettled”.
“We may have been guilty of thinking that was the disruption back then. Unfortunately, now it looks like it was really just the warmup,” he said.
Asked by Saul Cannon about what developments had changed their outlook, Mr Naish said it was less the geopolitics, “but rather the pace of technological change and the scale of investment in AI”.
“We always thought it was going to be transformative, but the scale of the investment in the US and China is just absolutely staggering,” he told the gathering.
Adam Copp said he was “surprised how much many other nations have used economic interdependence as leverage against each other”.
“We’ve seen the tariffs that have been used for a range of reasons and the Strait of Hormuz, China and critical minerals.
“Even US sanctions on International Court of Justice judges because they made decisions the US government didn’t like.
“I was very surprised the last couple of years about that.”
He said session two years ago had focused on the need for diversification, particularly in trade and how this would file through into an infrastructure development strategy.
He noted also that markets appeared to have adapted to tariffs imposed by the US.
Mr Copp said Australians were choosing to buy electric vehicles “hand over fist”.
“They’re now the most popular type of vehicle being purchased. But Australia is [still] very exposed to issues with access to diesel. We are one of the biggest consumers of diesel per person.
“That has a whole bunch of infrastructure implications, (push to electric and more freight on rail).”
Later in the conference, Opposition spokesperson Bridget McKenzie also spoke of the importance of diesel for the national economy.
She said issues around access to digital services and AI mean Australia needed to look at how it could “leverage some of that enormous investment to build up some of our indigenous capability in AI so we are not cut off when we may eventually have our cranes, our traffic, our hospitals all being vulnerable with non-indigenous AI models”.
The conference was held at Sydney's Hyatt Regency and attracted speakers from as far afield as Germany and the US.