Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration, Integration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

The Migration Amendment (Maritime Crew) Bill 2007 is a bill which should have had a much earlier date. Labor has been calling for this for some time. It is a small step in the right direction. The Migration Amendment (Maritime Crew) Bill 2007 creates a new class of temporary visa known as, unsurprisingly, a maritime crew visa. The application process for the new visa will enable crew to be appropriately security cleared prior to their entry into Australia. In 2005, approximately 585,000 maritime crew travelled to Australia. This bill creates a new class of temporary visa which will enable crew to be appropriately security cleared before they enter Australia.

The new requirements under this bill will become mandatory as at 1 January next year. The requirements include a valid passport, a maritime crew visa and a document establishing a crew member’s employment on the vessel. As I said, this is a measure that Labor has been demanding for some time. Our national security is far too important to have a regular point of border entry where people who have not been subjected to appropriate security checks can enter.

Labor welcomes the fact that the maritime crew visa sets in place a reporting regime for foreign maritime workers coming into Australia, but the fact that shipping agents will be able to apply on behalf of members of crew indicates that the ASIO and AFP assessments that will occur might not be as comprehensive as would be required. Currently, foreign non-military maritime crew and their families are not required to make a formal application for a visa before coming into Australia. Special purpose visas are currently granted by operation of law. At present, maritime crew are granted the special purpose visas on arrival in Australia, following checks against the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s movement alert list. This process does not permit security checks to be conducted before the crews of these ships are allowed to enter into Australian ports—an issue that Labor has been saying for some time needs to be addressed.

I cannot understand why it has taken almost 6½ years since the events in September 2001 for the government to introduce a security checked visa for maritime crew. The government has only just adopted what has been a longstanding Labor Party policy to vet foreign maritime workers. Labor has consistently raised concerns about foreign vessels, whose crews had not been security vetted, carrying thousands of tonnes of explosive materials around coastal Australia.

In 2005, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a damning report, Future unknown: the terrorist threat to Australian maritime security, on the state of Australia’s security arrangements. The report identified the danger of foreign flagged vessels carrying dangerous goods around the Australian coastline. This is a warning Labor has repeatedly made to the government. We have specifically warned about the dangers of foreign crewed, foreign flagged vessels, for which there has been no security check, carrying ammonium nitrate around Australia’s coastline. We have also pointed out that organisations like Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiah have acquired the skills and opportunities to launch a maritime security attack. These groups do operate in South-East Asian waters near our borders and in waters in which the incidence of piracy is actually the highest in the world.

On the last available figures, there are two acts of piracy per week in the waters just to our north-north-west—exactly the areas in which those organisations operate. Labor’s spokesperson on homeland security, the member for Brisbane, has reported that United States intelligence sources have observed that the al-Qaeda group is suspected of owning or having a long-term charter fleet of between 15 and 18 bulk general cargo vessels. Whilst it is believed that these vessels are used to generate revenue to support the group or to provide logistics for that network, it is also feasible that one of these vessels could be used as a floating bomb on some sort of mission, making use of an explosive just like ammonium nitrate. Against that background, you really want to have security checks on the crew. It is really important that that process be as watertight as it can possibly be.

The failure of the Howard government to ensure that these dangerous chemicals are handled by crews who have been properly checked and cleared—at the moment this applies only to Australian crews—is a great disgrace. Let us think about the consequences of that for a moment. An organisation which has access to maritime vessels also has expertise in maritime terrorism, has expertise in explosives and access to those explosives, yet the Howard government runs at a snail’s pace to upgrade the maritime security visa system.

Australian maritime workers, on the other hand, do undergo rigorous testing. To acquire their maritime security identity card, Australian maritime workers have to apply for AFP and ASIO background checks. Under the Howard government, foreign maritime workers do not undergo similar checks, even though they sometimes carry thousands of tonnes of explosives into and around Australia. That is dangerous and irresponsible. It has been a disturbing national security failure on behalf of this government to not address this concern until now.

While the government has improved security amongst Australian flagged ships, it is of great concern that invasive security and criminal background checks are not conducted on foreign crews. Furthermore, this government has misused the process of giving permits to foreign crewed ships to travel around Australian ports. A system has been in place for many years to enable foreign flagged, foreign crewed ships to operate the Australian coastal route by special permit. While that process appears to be sensible enough, this government has used it as a tool to attack the Australian crewed ships and their economic viability around Australian ports. As the shadow minister for homeland security and territories has repeatedly said, this government has seemingly handed out these permits like confetti. The government has not done the security checks on foreign crews that are done on Australian crews—and they are only done on Australian crews because we believe it is important for national security. We should not say that, because you have a foreign crewed ship, there cannot be a similar threat. It has been unacceptable.

While this government needs to provide more support to the Australian shipping industry, this bill at least goes some way to addressing the issue of security checks on foreign maritime crews. While the bill will enable crew to be appropriately security cleared before they enter Australia, it also contains a number of sensible measures to allow the visa to be ceased by declaration where it is considered undesirable for a person or class of persons to travel to, enter or remain in Australia. The bill also includes an express power to revoke such a declaration, to allow for situations where additional information may come to light about a person’s suitability to travel or to remain in Australia. These declarations and the capacity to revoke them are a very important practical measure that forms part of the bill. It is important that the government exercises it judiciously and sensibly, but obviously there is potential for national security considerations to give rise to a visa cancellation.

We also have the practical problem where, from time to time, the master of a vessel will make contact with Australian immigration and explain that a member of their crew has gone missing at the time the ship intends to leave. It is important in these situations for the minister to be able to cancel the visa. The reason why there is this revocation—it should be able to be made in a way that completely obliterates the declaration saying that the visa has gone—is that situations do occur, which are not just limited to the shipping industry but that industry is an example of where it does occur, where the master of the ship will believe initially that a member of the crew has gone missing and abandoned ship yet some hours later that crew member will be found in a tired or emotional state somewhere not too far from the port and, in fact, still be able to rejoin the vessel. In those circumstances it is entirely appropriate and those provisions are in the bill for good reason. They have to be exercised properly and the discretions that apply there have to be dealt with judiciously and carefully. Labor understands that the detail governing the new maritime crew visa will be set out in the migration regulations and we will have a look at the regulations when they are presented.

In the financial package that forms part of all of this, the government has allocated $100 million over five years for the introduction of the visa. In a media release dated 22 December 2005, the government announced a $100 million maritime crew visa system for all international seafarers visiting Australian ports after July 2007. The breakdown of that $100 million was announced as being $55.3 million for IT systems which would be associated with the new visa and to record sea crew movement records, to employ 19 additional regional sea ports officers to assist industry with the new visa and to conduct vessel boardings and manage compliance, and to employ additional staff in the immigration department’s entry operations centre to support the shipping industry. It also detailed that the Australian Customs Service will receive $39.5 million for the 66 new Customs officers who will enforce the new provisions as part of Customs vessel clearance processes. In addition, ASIO will receive $5.5 million under the package.

Labor will ask for further details regarding this expenditure, once we get to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s examination of the bill. It is imperative that this money be spent to improve Australia’s national security at our ports and along our coastline. It is overdue and much needed. Despite the government regularly wanting to make claims about being tough on border security, we have had not only the government’s long delay in introducing this bill but also Indonesian fishermen regularly entering Australian waters illegally.

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