COMMENT: The outboard wars

A WEEK or two back I got a phone call from a senior outboard company executive who was aggrieved about comments made in the mainstream press by Queensland-based marine industry consultant and academic Gary Fooks.

The general thrust of the outboard exec's spray was that Fooks was potentially doing damage to the marine industry via his contentious public claim that two-stroke outboards caused as much pollution as oil spills and should be phased out.

Fooks' "sensationalist" statements, the outboard exec said, would only serve to fuel the anti-fishing campaigns of extreme greens and could also cause a political and social backlash against boating in general.

There was no need for this sort of anti-two-stroke vendetta, the exec said, as "dirty" technology outboards would soon be phased out. All this sort of public warring did was create yet more trouble in an industry already fighting against the GFC and the insidious increase in no-fishing zones, he said.

Fooks' comments, which were first aired in an ABC radio interview and which have since been reported in major newspapers, have been criticised by various state BIAs and by OEDA as being "exaggerated".
AMEC, the "clean" marine engine organisation which split from OEDA earlier in the year, has not distanced itself from the more extreme elements of Fooks' statements.

There's no doubt that Fooks has the best interests of the marine sector at heart. He is a passionate campaigner for "clean" technology, which is the obvious future we are heading towards. But there are ways and means of achieving a green outboard sector. Making what could be considered as "outlandish" claims in the mainstream media does tend to paint us all with a rather grubby brush. The average punter just doesn't understand the difference between "clean" and "dirty" outboards. After reading or hearing Fooks' claims they'll see a boat with an outboard on the back and instantly think it's a pollution machine. Is that what we want - or need - potential customers to think of when they see a boat?

Fooks should have been more strategic about what he said and why he said it. Better still, maybe he shouldn't have said anything at all, at least in the public arena. At the end of the day, his comments aren't going to see two-strokes phased out any faster. All they have done, many industry pundits think, is make the average Aussie equate boating with pollution. And that's not good for any of us.

That said, there's no denying that "dirty" two-stroke engines are filthy examples of outdated technology. AMEC and OEDA should work together to ensure a phase out happens sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, AMEC should bite its tongue and stop the pointless anti-two-stroke sniping by controlling or moderating what its consultants and spokesmen say.
And OEDA should make a public statement that it is committed to phasing out "dirty" two-strokes as soon as possible.

Let's stop the infighting and concentrate on getting more Aussies into the wonderful world of boating and fishing.