Skipper's blog: Unity is the key to survival

OUR industry, despite its myriad hiccups, dramas, soap operas and setbacks, is not the most unpleasant in which to earn a living. Whilst there are many extroverts, showmen and eternal optimists as well as some shameless, ego-driven self-promoters (no, not me!), the calibre, professionalism and competencies of the people have all improved markedly as the decades roll by. And as for churlish, divisive, uncooperative spoilsports… well, there are barely any of them at all. That is, unless we look at certain members of the outboard industry.

Just to set the scene, so to speak, let’s have something of an analogy. It is generally acknowledged that the national governing body for the Australian automotive industry, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), does a sterling job. It stewards, moulds and melds its members into a strong, focused, cohesive group; it issues collective, collaborative news releases and statements; it lobbies governments (state and federal) on legislative changes that may adversely impact its members, and it negotiates strongly, selflessly and altruistically on behalf of its members (are you paying attention, BIAs?) with local/city authorities for the use of convention/exhibition centres for staging motor shows. Regardless of the eclectic mix of egos, high-pressure “guns”, self-made tycoons and target-driven foot soldiers constituting its membership, the FCAI is the official, respected “blanket” organ for an industry that shifts close to one million units per annum.

Compare this with the bumbling, uncoordinated, farcical machinations afflicting the outboard industry in Australia. Here is an industry with worldwide sales plummeting cataclysmically; an international industry that almost reached a seven-figure annual peak less than two decades ago, but which will currently be struggling to crank out more than 500,000 units. In our region, there has never been an industry more in need of solidarity, cohesion, focus and a cooperative, unified front, so what do we have instead? Well, we did have the original, fully representative industry body, the Outboard Engine Distributors Association (OEDA), of which all six manufacturers were members. Then we had three errant members who impetuously and petulantly decided to bid farewell to the original OEDA group. The three remaining manufacturers, who account for probably 70% of all outboards sold here, have elected to retain the OEDA moniker. In an ironic twist, however, one of the three deserting low-volume players used to sell a product that was undisputed market leader until the axe fell on that product’s previous owner in the early days of this century.

The three breakaway manufacturers, for reasons certainly not immediately discernible as altruistic, cooperative or progressive, joined a body called the Australian Marine Engine Council (AMEC). Other members of AMEC are diesel engine manufacturers Volvo Penta and Yanmar, and electric outboard manufacturer Torqeedo. So we have petrol outboards mixed in with electric outboards and diesel inboards. As I’ve stated before, hardly a cohesive, unitary, common-themed body – a bit like grouping tractors with garden equipment. I don’t like raking over old ground (as it’s not fair to readers who quite rightly expect something new in each rant), but everybody knows that the prime goal of AMEC’s outboard members is to hasten the banning of conventional 2-strokes so that they can automatically pick up market share in a realigned, reduced market without spending a single extra dollar on marketing and promotion.

As if membership of AMEC by those three outboard companies doesn’t smack of lamentable and pathetic divisiveness, recent dealer turmoil has left one of these companies in the seriously dire position of having no outlets left at all in the key boating area of Brisbane. In such a situation, I would suggest that this is no time to be a member of a divisive, marginal, reactionary industry body, and that it would be highly beneficial to be in an “umbrella” industry grouping that will permit access to comprehensive data showing the full picture. With a product staring down the barrel of a sales drought in a prime boating area, I think I’d want to be armed with as much information as possible about total market size on both a state-by-state and horsepower-segment basis.

Grandstanding, point-scoring and sanctimonious, self-righteous demonstrations of principle are all very well as long as things are bullish, buoyant and barrelling along, but what credibility or seriousness can be bestowed upon a renegade splinter group of dilettantes and stirrers following a narrow, self-aggrandising agenda?

Read any press release from Stephen Payne or his predecessor, the august Andrew McKellar, at the FCAI; watch TV and see the authoritative, imposing mien of someone like Mitch Hooke of the Minerals Council of Australia or the poised, professional composure of Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group, and you will see people at the very top of their game, speaking confidently, authoritatively and collectively on behalf of every single one of their members. For something as minuscule and trivial as the outboard sector to have two representative bodies is the equivalent of trying to make 30% of Tasmania independent from the rest of the island – so piddling and insignificant that nobody would give it more than a bemused, quizzical snort of derision.

I don’t have a horse in this race, and would actually be one of the first to rail about OEDA’s lack of decisive, proactive, quantifiable efforts, not to mention the lacklustre, leaden, unimaginative joke of a website. One would not be imbued with confidence or pride by seeing members’ logos (on a white swatch) cut and pasted lazily to a pale blue background, with one manufacturer’s PMS colour out of date by at least three years. And then there’s the fact that they don’t even have a proper, time-served outboard motor man at the helm etc., etc. These are factors which illustrate an enterprise founded more out of expediency than out of clarity and direction.

All being said, however, when compared with the misguided, misdirected, eclectic and dysfunctional machinations of the dissidents under the AMEC umbrella (with no website – not that I could find, anyway), OEDA is the equivalent of a crack military squad. For the sake of the entire industry and the wellbeing of all those employed by and dependent upon the outboard motor companies, enough is enough. It has now reached the point where it has to be OEDA or nothing. There will have to be some sort of rapprochement or symbiotic agreement with the dissidents to lure them back on board but this is no time for dissent, disorder and disunity. How can we muster customers if we can’t even muster ourselves?