Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the leave being afforded to me. I thought there were some other speakers on the speakers list for the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2005 prior to this point. I discovered only a few moments that that was not the case. The Australian maritime industry is incredibly important to Australia as an island nation. It seems to me that for too long it has been chronically undervalued—I suspect partly because of other agendas and ideological pursuits. It concerns me that the current government have, through a series of policies, devalued that industry.

Recently, I had the good fortune of visiting some folk in the United States and talking to them about the maritime industry and the way in which security issues are dealt with in maritime circumstances. I raised with them a concern I and others on this side of the parliament have about the government’s willingness to provide flag of convenience ships with single-voyage permits on an all too regular basis and with little regard for or knowledge of who owns the vessel, how it is crewed or, indeed, who the crew are. Identity checks are scant, and security checks are virtually non-existent. In spite of government regulations requiring ships to provide cargo manifests and crew manifests, ships come to our ports without doing that. You could not do that in the United States. In the United States, ships are required to stand off. Coastguard then intercept them either by boat or from the air.

Further to that, there is concern not just with the trade that is plied but with what is carried. I commented in an earlier debate about concerns—I will not go through them now—about the carriage of potentially dangerous material such as ammonium nitrate and the examples we have seen of that. There is an interesting comparison here. When you ask people in the United States how they deal with the security threat posed by flag of convenience ships picking up ammonium nitrate in one domestic port and taking it to another domestic port, they look at you rather quizzically. When you pursue it, they say: ‘Of course, it does not happen here. You cannot have a foreign ship and carry cargo from one port in America to another port in America.’ The laws of cabotage apply. The idea of single-voyage permits was something quite foreign to the people in the United States whom I met with a couple of weeks ago and discussed this very topic with.

Single-voyage permits in the Australian context, with our comparatively small merchant navy, fulfil some useful role when properly applied. However, the history of single-voyage permits in recent years is that they have not been properly applied. They have been handed out with gay abandon and with little regard to either the security environment that we now operate in or the long-term interests of Australia and the need for us to have a strong and viable maritime industry.

The Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2005 deals with one aspect of the maritime industry, which is important and in large measure non-controversial. But I take this opportunity to call on the government to reassess their approach to Australia’s maritime industry. At this moment, as we speak in the parliament, elsewhere in another committee room a hearing is being conducted into the shipbuilding industry and its importance to Australia. It is vitally important. Shipbuilding goes hand in glove with our requirements as an island nation—the capacity to maintain, design and construct ships on our land. Also important is our capacity to have well-trained, highly qualified mariners—people who are seafarers of good repute. Australia’s seafarers are held in the highest regard around the world.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity and pleasure of talking with people from the International Maritime Organisation. There is no doubt that the professionalism of Australian seafarers is acknowledged around the world. Sadly, it does not get the recognition it should from this government. So I take this opportunity to strongly urge the government to reassess its approach to the maritime industry and to take on board the importance that the industry holds for Australia and the need to nurture it and to ensure that Australian crewed ships are once again able to properly conduct trade around the coastal shipping lanes. In other countries that is done as a matter of fact, but here in Australia it is regarded very often by those opposite as some cardinal sin of economic theory. In fact, it operates without a problem in the greatest capitalist economy in the world. I suggest to those opposite that it would operate here equally well.

Finally, I urge those opposite to provide some genuine respect for those Australian seafarers who, it seems to me, are better recognised abroad than they are here by our own government. That is a terrible slight on very professional seafarers. It has been my pleasure to meet many of them over the years I have been in this parliament. I found them all to be of the standard that people such as those at the International Maritime Organisation expect as well. I, again, thank the minister for his consideration in allowing me to make that contribution.

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