It should get out of a business it should never have been conned into in the first place.

The Gray government in 1984 got suckered into it when the federal government decided to withdraw ANL shipping services from Bass Strait because it was losing about $2.5 million a year. 

The feds gave Tasmania $26 million to buy a passenger ferry, and recouped the money over the next decade by cutting its losses.

With the free gift the flamboyant new ferry owner was conned again by maritime unions, who stacked on a ship sit-in while the new ferry acquisition, the Nils Holgersson, was still in Kiel, Germany.

Unions then forced the state Liberal government to build a $4 million crew quarters on top of the stern, because crew didn’t want to sleep below the water line. 

Few government commercial entities get such a head start from a taxpayers’ grant. About 12 years later taxpayers were lumbered with a passenger subsidy, on top of freight equalisation payments.

This overly pampered shipping line makes a poor rate of return, has a mixed outcome with profits and losses, and, in recent years has experienced a decline in passenger and vehicle movements. 

In 2004 the ferries carried 505,587 passengers and 220,608 vehicles.

In 2013 they carried 330,398 passengers and 165,456 vehicles.

The two vessels, built in 1998, are worth about $91 million each but are depreciating with age.

They will have to be replaced, although the government is trying to delay the inevitable.

TT-Line has been pocketing what it would normally return to taxpayers as a dividend, so that it could wipe out its debt.

Now it’s debt free which is good, but taxpayers paid for it, not passengers.

TT-Line is worth about $270 million.

It is the only sea-going passenger ferry service in Australia.

As a debt-free, heavily subsidised operation it could make a good acquisition in the private sector, with suitable conditions attached so that an affordable Bass Strait ferry service continued.

You couldn’t blame the government in 1984 from having to take over the service, especially in light of the federal gift of $26 million, but like many enterprises such as Tasrail, governments are always a sucker for the politics of the market place.

Taxpayers are a worse bunch than shareholders to deal with.

TT-Line is not quite the same being and philosophy as say Metro, but like Metro it is more attuned to providing a service than making a fortune for taxpayers.

Like Metro it operates as a monopoly on regular passenger routes, but its performance is just as ordinary given the level of taxpayer investment.

I always sneer when I see a Metro or TT-Line balance sheet because it’s a pretend thing.

They’re not really full blown private sector players. 

They don’t make enough money to survive and thrive in the true sense.

TT-line remains in public ownership because governments are too afraid to sell it off. 

After taking over the service in 1984 as premier, Robin Gray looked at selling it in the 1990s while he was TT-Line minister, but after a few tyre kickers it came to nothing.

The new minister Rene Hidding should have another look.

It doesn’t make sense to outlay huge amounts on replacement vessels and only then look at selling the business.

Do them up and then sell them now.

An ocean-going ferry passenger service is not a core business of government.

It never has been.