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

We find ourselves in a slightly strange situation of debating two bills on the same subject with almost identical titles in the same week. I cannot blame the honourable member for Fairfax for speaking on the wrong bill on Tuesday, but I have made quite sure that I have brought the right speech with me today. The Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Maritime Security Guards and Other Measures) Bill 2005 is a response to demands from the maritime industry to tighten the security regime at Australian ports and on offshore marine facilities, such as oil-drilling platforms. The bill gives maritime security guards the power to request a person found within a maritime security zone to provide identification and a reason for being in the zone. It gives them the power to request a person found in a maritime security zone without authorisation to move out of the zone and, if that request is not complied with, the power to remove the person from the zone. It also gives the guards the power to remove or have removed vehicles or vessels found in the maritime security zones without authorisation. These provisions are sensible and necessary and reflect the wish of those who work in the maritime industry for a more rigorous regime in ports and maritime facilities. For this reason, Labor welcomes these provisions. Labor has repeatedly argued the need for specialised security guards in Australian ports with defined powers, because we recognise that the maritime security environment requires specialised people to upgrade and maintain security.

This bill is another in a series of bills which make piecemeal changes to Australia’s maritime security environment. As I said in my speech on the first of these bills earlier this week, it is the opposition’s view that these changes do not go far enough and that the government has not done enough to tighten Australia’s maritime security system. That is why, although we are supporting the bill as far as it goes, we have moved a second reading amendment, which was moved by the honourable member for Brisbane, the shadow minister for homeland security. This amendment condemns the Howard government for its failure:

... to provide necessary maritime security and protect Australians, including:

(1)

its careless and widespread use of single and continuing voyage permits for foreign vessels with foreign crew who do not undergo appropriate security checks;

(2)

permitting foreign flag of convenience ships to carry dangerous goods on coastal shipping routes; and

(3)

failing to;

(a)

ensure ships provide details of crew and cargo 48 hours before arrival;

(b)

x-ray or inspect 90 per cent of containers;

(c)

establish and properly fund an Australian coastguard; and

(d)

establish a Department of Homeland Security to better coordinate security in Australia”.

That is our second reading amendment. Yesterday we had clear confirmation of the correctness of the charges made in this Labor amendment. This confirmation came from none other than the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. In the Main Committee yesterday morning, the minister was summing up for the government in the debate on the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Security Plans and Other Measures) Bill 2006. As is appropriate in the Main Committee, I used the intervention process to ask the minister whether he would comment on the fact that, while liquefied natural gas ships coming into Japanese or Korean ports must meet very strict security guidelines for seamen who are on the ships, this is not the case in relation to Australian LNG shipping. The minister replied that we do have strict requirements in relation to security and checking of the seamen on vessels coming into this country. He failed to mention the fact, which I referred to in my speech on the bill on Tuesday, that a full third of all ships coming into Australia do not comply with the government’s own safety regulations—that is, we do not know who the crews are of a third of the foreign ships that come into Australian ports—and nothing is being done to enforce Australia’s laws.

The honourable member for Batman also used the intervention process in the Main Committee to ask the minister to give an assurance to the House that all ships berthing in Australia are supplying their crew manifest prior to berthing, as required by law. The minister dodged the question, saying that the law exists and that there are penalties for those who fail to comply with it. He avoided giving the commitment that the member for Batman asked for. It is hardly a radical commitment; just a commitment that the existing law, passed by this government, was being complied with. The honourable member for Batman then asked the minister if he could advise how many successful prosecutions had been launched against shipping companies not meeting the requirements of Australian law and what fines were being imposed on the shipping companies. The minister gave a truly extraordinary answer to this question. He said:

Obviously I would have to take a question of that detail on notice, but I remind the member the regulations have been recently amended and changed. Because of the tightening of recent rules and the relatively recent action of that, it would not surprise me if there had not been any prosecutions yet because those rules have not had time to take effect.

So the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the minister responsible for Australia’s maritime security, in the space of five minutes in the Main Committee yesterday did the following: (a) he refused to give a guarantee that Australian law would be enforced at Australian ports; (b) he admitted that he did not know how many ships were failing to comply with Australian law; (c) he admitted he did not know how many shipping operators, if any, were being prosecuted; and, finally, (d) he gave a convoluted and unconvincing explanation for why it might be the case that no prosecutions at all had been launched.

This is one of the worst performances by a cabinet minister that I have seen since I have been in this House, since 1998. Coming from a minister responsible for a large area of Australia’s security policy it was astonishing and alarming. It really is a disgrace that this government, and particularly the minister, have no idea of what is going on in Australian ports and apparently have no intention of doing anything about it. Five years after September 11, ministers in the Howard government do not seem to care that Australian ports are still wide open to terrorist attack and that port communities, such as my community of Port Melbourne, are being left unprotected.

The threat of attacks on Australian ports is not an idle threat. As I said in my speech on Tuesday, we live next to a part of the world with the highest rate of maritime piracy in the world. The member for Brisbane gave some of the detail of that in his opening remarks on this bill and our amendment. Half of all the incidents of maritime piracy, including the hijacking of ships, take place in waters around Indonesia and the Philippines. As the US State Department points out, this area is rife with smuggling and similar activities that provide a perfect cover for terrorist planning.

During the debate on this series of bills, Labor members have repeatedly pointed out that it would be easy for terrorists to hijack a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate and use it as a floating bomb in an Australian port. For people in the gallery who may not know what ammonium nitrate is, it is a commonly used agricultural fertiliser but it is also the preferred method of terrorists for blowing up places, like they did in Oklahoma and in Bali. It may be argued that no-one has ever attempted to do such a thing. The reply to that is, of course, that before 11 September 2001 no-one had ever attempted to hijack an airliner and fly it into a skyscraper. Now we know that such things are possible.

In the case of ship hijacking we at least have the advantage of having thought of that possibility. We can bet that if we have thought of it so have al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah. But our precautions against such an attack are totally inadequate. Even those precautions we do have, such as the requirement that ships advise of their cargoes and crews 48 hours before they dock, are not being enforced. As I said in my speech the other day, 33 per cent of foreign ships coming into Australia are defying the Australian law. The Australian government has launched no prosecutions against them and we are having these crews just arrive in Australia and we have no idea of who they are before they enter into such places as Garden Island in the middle of Sydney, Port Melbourne, Port Adelaide et cetera.

As well as the security aspects, the matters raised in this bill and by Labor in its amendment have serious implications for the Australian economy. Australia lives by its export trade, and the bulk of that trade is still conducted by sea. To reach our principal export markets in China, Japan and Korea ships must pass through the waters of South-East Asia which is, as I have said, the location of half of the world’s maritime piracy incidents. A particular concern is Australia’s growing export trade in liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The security of Australian LNG is one of Australia’s most important marketing advantages in the global LNG market. Australia’s reputation as a reliable supplier is one of our key selling points with our Asian customers, and our ability to guarantee the security of our LNG carriers is a key component of that reputation.

That is why the use of Australian shipping and the use of skilled, qualified Australian crews is an important part of a strong maritime security regime. Australian LNG tankers, crewed by Australians, have a demonstrated commitment to the highest levels of maritime security, aimed at maintaining the security of both the LNG tankers and their cargoes. That is why this government’s lack of commitment to maintaining an Australian shipping industry and Australian crews is so short-sighted. A report produced in 2004 by Sandia National Laboratories, under contract to the United States Department of Energy, entitled Guidance on risk analysis and safety implications of a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) spill over water stated that the Australian LNG risk management strategies represented world’s best practice and safety in shipping LNG.

It is obvious that the same level of risk assessment and commitment to high-quality risk management strategies cannot be guaranteed, and will not be maintained, if the Australian government allows the use of underpaid, undertrained foreign crews and flags of convenience ships. This is not an attack on non-Australian seafarers. It is an attack on a small number of shipping operators who seek to maximise their profits by exploiting their crews, many of them drawn from low-wage and poorly skilled countries, and who notoriously cut corners on safety, environmental protection and security. It is a scandal that this government consistently favours this small minority of unscrupulous shipowners at the expense of Australian seafarers. This is the view of not simply people employed in the shipping industry, the employees. This is the view of the Australian shipping industry. This practice of the Australian government is at the expense of the responsible majority of shipowners and at the expense of Australian security.

This government is fond of blaming the unions for everything that goes wrong in Australia’s transport system. In particular, it has spent more than a decade demonising the Maritime Union of Australia. But when it comes to maritime security the MUA has a much better record than this government does. After all, its maritime workers and their families will be the first to suffer if there is an attack on an Australian port or a hijacking of an Australian ship. The MUA members in my electorate are as much concerned about Australia’s security as any member of this government, and they have shown that concern in practice.

The MUA supported and fully cooperated with the introduction of the maritime security identification card, MSIC, from 1 November last year. The MSIC arrangements involve police and security checks on all seafarers and related personnel who require access to maritime security zones and the facilities and ships within those zones. The MUA fully cooperated in this despite the fact that there was a risk of some of their members losing their jobs because of having minor criminal convictions long ago, not related to security but sufficient for them to fail the eligibility requirements. The muddle and confusion that has surrounded the introduction of the MSIC, just like the confusion over the aviation security identification card which I spoke about a few weeks ago, is entirely the responsibility of the government.

Let me conclude in the same way I concluded my remarks on the previous bill: if we are serious about maritime security, Australia needs a minister for homeland security, a full-time Inspector of Transport Security and a full-time professional coastguard so that Australian law can be enforced. Only then will Australia have an acceptable level of maritime security, and only under a Labor government will we get these things.

I cannot emphasise this enough: the 33 per cent of shipping coming into this country without the laws of Australia being enforced is an open invitation to the terrorists of this world who are active in the South-East Asian region to exploit the situation. Until these loopholes are closed, the Australian government will be negligent in the area of maritime security. We support this legislation and we argue for our amendment, but the government’s stance on maritime security is quite pathetic.

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