Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Security Plans and Other Measures) Bill 2006 is one of a series of bills the government is introducing in the area of maritime security. The aim of this bill is to simplify security procedures for ships and port facilities, to clarify processes for drawing up security plans and maritime facilities and to amend various acts to keep them consistent with the principal act.

Next week we mark the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 and the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York. It should have been an alert to Australia that we needed a new regime in transport security—both aviation and maritime security. I have spoken a number of times in this House on issues relating to both aviation and maritime security, because I remain unconvinced that this government and, in particular, the National Party Minister for Transport and Regional Services are taking this issue seriously enough. Like the member for Batman, I am convinced that the ethos by which this government judges maritime security is the lowest common denominator—but dollars are not security.

There are still huge holes in the government’s transport security system—holes that are quite unacceptable in our current security environment. Last month, I spoke about the glaring inadequacies in our aviation security. This is becoming a major scandal. Only yesterday the Minister for Transport and Regional Services had to admit that no baggage is being screened at major regional airports such as Launceston, Townsville, Maroochydore and Alice Springs. This completely ignores the recommendations of the Wheeler report, which the government itself commissioned. Again, like a broken record, I repeat: does the government not realise where the September 11 attacks began? They began from a small regional airport in Portland, Maine, where the terrorists got themselves on the security side of the airport and were therefore able to get onto the major planes, which they hijacked at Logan Airport in Boston.

This is a pattern which is blatantly obvious to anyone. It means that thousands of passengers travelling from these major regional airports around our country and flying directly to Sydney and Melbourne are arriving with unscreened bags. I have to ask: what have the government members who represent these regional centres been doing? Where are the protests from the honourable members for Bass and Herbert about their constituents being put at risk in this way every time they fly? The people of Launceston and Townsville deserve better than this. I am sure that after the next election they will elect members who look after the security of the communities they represent.

As the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, the admission by the minister is fresh evidence that the Prime Minister cannot be believed when he claims that his government is doing everything it can to protect the travelling public. The Prime Minister certainly cannot look Australians in the eye and tell them that he is doing everything he can to protect them from terrorism. As the Leader of the Opposition rightly said: if Australia had a full-time inspector of transport security, tasks like regional airport security would get the attention they deserve. The same is of course true for maritime security, which is the subject of this bill and not the subject of the bill that the member for Fairfax talked about—the maritime security guards and other measures bill.

I must say that it is surprising that, with so many debates in this House, so few members of the government are willing to speak in favour of their own legislation. It was a disgrace—and I will recount this to the House—that in the Main Committee during debate on our deployment of troops to Afghanistan there were 15 speakers from the opposition but only one speaker—not a backbencher but a parliamentary secretary, so I suppose it was part of his duties—from the government side. There were 15 opposition people and only one government person who spoke on this very important deployment involving the physical safety of members of our defence forces.

This bill requires the House to look again at our maritime security. While Labor are not opposing the bill, we are taking the opportunity to highlight once again this government’s continuing failure to take maritime security seriously. The honourable member for Brisbane, the shadow minister for homeland security, spoke in detail on the many problems which this government has failed to deal with, apparently because it does not want to offend the stevedoring or shipping companies. We all remember from the maritime dispute of 1998 how close this government was to certain interests in the maritime industry. We can now see the consequences of that with the neglect of the security of our ports and all of those who work in the maritime industry.

Australian law currently requires all ships arriving in Australia to advise authorities of the details of their cargo and crew 48 hours before they reach an Australian port; but, as the honourable member for Brisbane told us yesterday, only 67 per cent of ships coming into Australian ports comply with that requirement. So 33 per cent of ships entering Australian ports do not comply with the legal requirement to inform Australian authorities about their crew.

The member for Batman pointed out the difference in the treatment of LNG carriers, which are such an important part of our export trade, and the crews on flags of convenience ships are coming into Australia on an increasing number of single voyage permits. The government allows this because of the National Party’s lowest common denominator attitude to shipping and to the safety of Australian citizens. I have to ask: what kind of government passes laws and then does nothing about people who blatantly ignore these laws? What kind of government gives this House pious lectures about security and then fails to enforce its own laws—laws passed with the bipartisan support of this parliament—in such a vital area? The answer is: a complacent government, a slack government and an incompetent government.

The centrepiece of Labor’s maritime security policy is the creation of a coastguard. The Minister for Defence claims that this an outrageous policy and a slur on the Royal Australian Navy. In fact, it is nothing of the kind. The function of the Navy is to project military power at sea, often far from our shores. The Royal Australian Navy is currently doing just that, with its usual efficiency. I can testify to that, Mr Deputy Speaker, having had a chance to see for myself Australia’s role in the recent RIMPAC exercises in Hawaii. I can testify to the efficiency of HMAS Manoora and HMAS Stuart and the great work that the sailors and officers on those ships are doing on behalf of Australia.

The functions of a coastguard would be to protect Australia’s coastline from all manner of threat—few of them would be military in a direct sense, such as illegal immigration, illegal fishing, environmental threats such as oil dumping—to monitor the activity of shipping and, if necessary, to enforce Australian law with regard to shipping. If we had a coastguard, we could enforce our own shipping laws and protect Australian ports while not diverting the RAN from the important tasks that we have a Navy for, which often takes it far away from our shores.

In the United States, ships that fail to provide necessary information are required to stand offshore, and the US Coast Guard enforces this requirement. In Australia, we have no coast guard; we just let them sail in anyway. Of course, again, as both the member for Brisbane and the member for Batman have pointed out, we have an increasing number of flag of convenience ships and an increasing number of single voyage permits, with ships coming into Australia, 33 times out of 100, with sailors about whom we have no idea what their backgrounds are or what their purpose is. So, if Jemaah Islamiah were to fill a Panamanian tanker with ammonium nitrate, hire a Ukrainian crew who spoke no English and had no idea where they were or what they were carrying, and sail it into Port Melbourne in my electorate, the requirement that it notify the port authorities of its cargo would probably not be enforced, and we would have no capacity to prevent it from coming into port, even if we found it suspicious. Does this government really think it is appropriate that the Royal Australian Navy keep its warships tied up in every Australian port to guard against threats of this kind? That is not what the RAN, with its highly specialised ships, equipment and crews, is trained and funded for. That is the role of a coastguard.

The government likes to pretend that a coastguard is some kind of second-best, Gilbert and Sullivan outfit. Let me remind the House that the US Coast Guard has more than 40,000 personnel, that it has an annual budget of $US5 billion and that it deploys five large coastal patrol ships, 12 high-endurance cutters, 27 medium-endurance cutters and many smaller craft of various kinds, plus 200 aircraft. Its personnel have specialist training in maritime surveillance, search and rescue, police work and interception. I point out in passing that Australia actually has a longer coastline than the US, although of course it is not as densely populated.

Every day, on average, the US Coast Guard conducts 82 search and rescue missions, seizes $US2.4 million worth of illegal drugs, conducts 23 waterfront facility safety or security inspections, responds to 11 oil and hazardous chemical spills and boards 202 vessels of interest to law enforcement. Far from thinking that the Coast Guard is a waste of money, the US is currently planning a major expansion and re-equipping of the Coast Guard to meet the new challenges of the times, including the terrorist threat to US ports and shipping lanes—a threat which I suggest equally pertains to Australia. The United States Coast Guard’s motto is ‘semper paratus’, which means ‘always ready’. This government’s motto, by contrast, should be ‘numquam paratus’, which means ‘never ready’. I suppose it goes with ‘never, ever’, doesn’t it.

I have spoken before about the fact that the National Party has been responsible for the transport portfolio ever since this government has been in power and that it therefore has been responsible for our maritime and aviation security. As I have said, it is Labor’s view that these matters should be the responsibility of a minister for homeland security, but this government in its wisdom has chosen to leave them to a succession of National Party transport ministers—ministers who have many other things to think about. There is evidence that these ministers have never seen the security of Australia’s ports and airports as their top priority.

In the case of the current Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the honourable member for Wide Bay, his top priority this year has been saving his political neck and the collective neck of the National Party from the ever-widening scandal of the ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal, which of course took place during the time when he was Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry from 1999 to 2005 and while his leader, the current Deputy Prime Minister, was Minister for Trade.

I am sure the Minister for Transport and Regional Services has given less than his full attention to the issues of foreign crews on freighters entering Port Melbourne or to the issue of screening baggage at Townsville Airport. The reason is that he has been anxiously awaiting the report of Mr Justice Cole’s royal commission into the ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal. And he has every right to be anxious, because every week the news from the Cole commission gets worse for the government.

Last week we learned about the role of BHP Billiton in the so-called Tigris affair, which was a calculated attempt to rort the UN’s oil for food program. It seems that BHP was more than willing to join with the AWB, which I have previously called the militant wing of the National Party—remember that great picture of Mr Flugge, the former National Party candidate, half naked, with his pistol, sitting there in Iraq?—in recouping more than $10 million. The National Party militant wing, the AWB, together with BHP, wanted to recoup more than $10 million from the UN’s escrow accounts which BHP had paid to Iraq in effect as a bribe to buy Australian wheat. The AWB did this by inflating the price charged for Australian wheat and then passing the money on to BHP. This gives the scandal a bipartisan aspect, since of course BHP has very close links with the Liberal Party. Once again, it was the National Party ministers who were asleep on the job, while the AWB and BHP joined forces to collude with Saddam Hussein’s regime in rorting the oil for food program.

I am sure you would be pleased, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, if I came back to the bill. The bill deals with maritime security, and there is certainly plenty more to say about the risks to the security of Australian ports and the people who live around them, such as the people of Port Melbourne in my electorate. The fact is that we live in the most dangerous region of the world in this respect. In April, the US Department of State released a report on threats to maritime security in our region. The report said:

While Indonesia has significantly improved its efforts to control the maritime boundary area with the Philippines, the area remains difficult to control, surveillance is partial at best, and traditional smuggling and piracy groups provide an effective cover for terrorist activities in the area.

The 2005 annual report of the International Maritime Organisation shows that nearly half of the world’s reported piracy incidents occurred in South-East Asian waters. One hundred and seventeen of the 266 cases, including a number of shipjackings, were in this region. It is not difficult to imagine al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiah hijacking a ship and using it as a floating bomb, aimed at one of our busy ports. There would be almost nothing to prevent this.

The government has not implemented the measures needed to reduce the risks to our ports. The policy of handing out single or multiple voyage permits without any proper process to ascertain the bona fides of the shipping operators increases this risk. Last year we had the case of the Pancaldo, which carried 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate up the Australian coast without any security checks on its crew.

Other countries, even countries we usually regard as high security risks, are a long way ahead of us. The Philippines has recently banned the importation of ammonium nitrate. I realise that Australia is not in a position to do this, but we might at least make an effort to prevent it being carried into Australian ports in ships about which we know nothing, manned by crews about whom we know nothing either.

Labor supports this bill, but that should not be taken as an endorsement of this lazy government’s failure to act to protect the security of our seafarers and our port communities or even to enforce the laws that this government itself has passed. That is why I support the amendment moved by the honourable member for Brisbane, namely:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Howard Government for its failure to provide necessary maritime security and protect Australians, including:

(1)

the Howard Government’s failure to conduct security checks on foreign crews;

(2)

the Government’s continued failure to ensure foreign ships provide manifestos of crew and cargo before arriving at an Australian port;

(3)

the ready availability of single and multiple voyage permits for foreign flag of convenience ships including the ready availability of permits for foreign flag of convenience ships carrying dangerous materials in Australian waters and ports;

(4)

the failure of the Howard Government to examine or x-ray 90% of shipping containers;

(5)

the Government’s failure to create a Department of Homeland Security to remove dangerous gaps and to better coordinate security in Australia; and

(6)

the Howard Government’s failure to establish an Australian Coastguard to patrol our coastline”.

Under a Labor government we will have a full-time minister for homeland security, we will have a full-time inspector of transport security and we will have a full-time professional coastguard. Only then will Australia have an acceptable level of maritime security.

See this speech in context