Sea Freight

Shipping is crucial to Australia's international trade, carrying 99% of Australia's total merchandise trade by mass and tonne kilometres and 75% by value It plays a less significant role in the domestic Australian freight task around 2.2% by total tonnes carried and 27% by tonne kilometres.

The advantages of sea transport are its capacity and economies of scale. It is particularly suited to long haul containerised and bulk cargo.

The Australian coastal fleet is comprised of both international and Australian flagged vessels licensed to participate in Australia's coastal trade. Under the Navigation Act 1912, vessels may be licensed to participate in the Australian coastal trade regardless of its flag or crew nationality.

The international shipping fleet servicing imports and exports fall into two main groups: liner shipping and non liner shipping:

• Liner shipping companies have fixed sailing schedules based on their berthing windows at each port of call. They operate weekly services in consortiums usually comprised of 3-4 individual shipping companies who allocate 4-5 vessels to a service, these consortia are governed by (Part 10) of the Trade Practices Act 1974; and
• Non liner shipping comprise of ships that transport dry and liquid bulk commodities, roll on/roll off vessels that handle project or over-dimensional cargo and vehicles and large machinery.

Ports 

Ports play a vital role in Queensland's logistics network as gateways for international and coastal trade and commerce. Each port provides a broad range of facilities that cater for the diverse land/sea interface requirements of international and coastal trade.
In addition to trading ports, Queensland has non trading ports at Cooktown, Burketown and Maryborough and community ports at Quintell Beach and Thursday Island.

Queensland's system of ports, port facilities and port services is provided through government owned corporation structures.
Queensland ports are administered by port authorities whom principally operate under the provisions of the Government Owned Corporations Act 1993, the Transport Infrastructure Act 1994 and the Financial Administration and Audit Act 1977. This legislative regime enables the Queensland government to retain ownership of the port authorities through the shareholding Ministers (the Treasurer and the Minister for Transport, Trade, Employment and Industrial Relations), and to set overall strategic direction. Each port authority has a Board of Directors and reports regularly to the shareholding Ministers.

Under the Queensland Competition Authority Act 1997, Queensland ports are open to competition including third party access to port services and infrastructure and prices oversight by the Queensland Competition Authority. Commercial charters for port authorities require that they have pricing structures that enable sufficient revenue to be generated to meet the efficient costs of providing services.