Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

This motion really does two things. One is to divert attention away from the fact that the Liberal Party, since coming to office in September 2013, has done nothing at all about Bass Strait freight. Despite all of its promises, it has done nothing. It promised a lot and it has delivered nothing. It has had the Productivity Commission report that was referred to by the member for Lyons since 7 March this year. What has happened to it? Nothing. We have had Minister Truss come down and, essentially, say that the Joint Commonwealth and Tasmanian Economic Council will look at it. That was in June. There is still nothing from that report. We have had the members for Bass, Braddon and Lyons talk about the possibility of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme being opened up to north-bound exports. And then, of course, in the last few weeks we have heard this murmuring about coastal shipping.

But coastal shipping, of course, is really talking about the wages—the wages of the Australian workers on the ships. This government has never seen a worker's wage it does not want to cut. We have seen that recently. We have seen it with the ADF and we have seen in the past, because it will take every opportunity it can to attack workers.

But if you look at the history of Bass Strait freight and how complex an issue it is, and if you talk to industry and to the exporters who are trying to get produce off the island, it is much more complicated than those opposite would have you believe. That is why, of course, the Labor government introduced the Freight Logistics Coordination Team in 2011 to deal with the issues and to have the people that are trying to get produce and freight off the island in conversation with the government about what levers government has and what governments can do. That led to Labor investing $40 million over two years to help exporters tackle the high freight costs and to grow and export their volumes and their value. It would fund the establishment of the expert advisory support and a trial of an online trading portal especially aimed at small agricultural producers and look at the ways of cutting waste, particularly when it comes to empty shipping containers across the strait.

We looked at this very, very carefully, and we had $40 million on the table—$20 million from the Commonwealth and $20 million from the state. What happened when those opposite came to government? They scrapped that $40 million that industry and people had asked for in Tasmania. Since then, they have had the Productivity Commission review, which we talked about, which they have had since 7 March. That review, of course, said what every other Productivity Commission review has said—that is, there is no coherent economic rationale for the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme. The Productivity Commission report said what we said it would say, and that is that the scheme should be scrapped. This is, of course, not what we support on this side of the House. But, clearly, they went into that report knowing that it was going to come to this conclusion. Since then, they have done absolutely nothing with it.

To make it worse, the state Liberal government came out just last week with the same announcement that the former state Labor government made in February. It was the exact same announcement—that is, they are commencing negotiations for an international ship to go out of Tasmania to export our goods—except that, of course, the state Liberal government are saying it is going to cost more than when Labor was having those same negotiations. So the state Liberal government and the federal Liberal government said that they were going to fix Bass Strait. And, of course, they have not been able to do it, because it is complex. They made all sorts of promises to exporters and to people who want to get freight off the island, and they have delivered nothing—nothing at all.

When are they actually going to deliver a response to this Productivity Commission report? When are they actually going to tell Tasmanians how they intend to resolve it? From talking to those exporters and those people who have ramped up production because of Labor's $100 million jobs and growth plan, we know it has seen volumes increase and has seen these industries grow—

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