Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise on this occasion to speak to the Protection of the Sea (Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage) Bill 2008 and the Protection of the Sea (Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2008. The purpose of the bills is to give effect in Australia to the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage, internationally known as the bunkers convention. The bunkers convention establishes a liability and compensation regime for pollution damage caused by spills of bunker oil. Bunker oil is any hydrocarbon mineral oil, including lubricating oil, used or intended to be used for the operation or propulsion of a ship. It does not refer to oil that is carried as a cargo. Bunker oils are carried by large commercial ships. They are often heavy fuel oils, which are highly persistent and viscous. They can potentially travel great distances as a result of wind and the action of currents and cause widespread contamination. Heavy fuel oils are generally not amenable to many of the clean-up techniques used for oils that float.

This legislation when passed will bring into effect the bunkers convention on 21 November 2008. The bunker oil bill ratifies the international bunkers convention. Australia introduced legislation in 2001 to require ships with a gross tonnage of 400 or more entering Australian ports to have documentation on board demonstrating they have insurance coverage. However, under that legislation accountability for spills exists only if the shipowner is found to be at fault. The consequential amendments will maintain the current Australian legislation relating to ships with a gross tonnage of 400 or more without duplication of necessary certification.

As the member for Kalgoorlie, I represent approximately one-third of Australia’s coastline, including the Pilbara ports of Dampier and Port Hedland. I also represent some of the most pristine coastlines in Australia and, indeed, the world. I have, according to GIO Australia, some 16,000 kilometres of coastline, most of it extremely pristine. I submit in my contribution in this House that it should be kept that way.

The legislation before the House today is also supported extensively by the industry umbrella groups, Shipping Australia and the Association of Australian Ports and Marine Authorities. I was very pleased to find out when researching this legislation that all of the umbrella groups representing the shipping industry here in Australia are only too pleased to support this legislation also. They have for many years now expressed an increasing concern about the maintenance of our marine based industries, given that the livelihoods of those who occupy coastal towns and cities so often depend upon the bounty of the sea.

Australia’s commitment to the ratification of the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage, known as the bunkers convention, through the protection of the sea bills is very important. Almost all of Australia’s international trade is carried by sea. More significantly, Australia is in fact the largest shipping nation in the world when one considers the tonnages that are sent from and arrive in Australian ports. From the earliest days, when Australia rode on the sheep’s back and wool was transported around the world, to now, when we are exporting vast tonnages of coal, iron ore and liquefied natural gas to Japan and China, ships have been a vital link in the supply chain.

The Australian public are all too familiar with the sight of ships off our ports, waiting to be loaded. In some cases they are waiting too long to be loaded. I have in mind some of the coal ports of the eastern seaboard. I am pleased to compare that circumstance with the extremely efficient circumstance of the loading of iron ore vessels off the Pilbara coast, in my electorate. There it is pleasing to see half a dozen large vessels waiting to be loaded. It assures some of the larger iron ore companies in my electorate of a guaranteed supply to their overseas customers. But if you are seeing ships numbering 30 or 40 all paying demurrage then it is a very expensive view.

The primary ports in my electorate are Broome, Port Hedland, Dampier and Esperance, as well as the minor ports of Wyndham, Derby and Carnarvon. Dampier and Port Hedland vie for the position of largest tonnage port in Australia from year to year. There is a very strong rivalry between those two port authorities as to who is going to knock the other off in which particular year. Currently the prize is held by Port Hedland. It seems to me that it is a reorganisation. By including smaller outlets in the greater Port Hedland harbour authority area, it seems they are going to be hard to beat in years to come. They currently have a port capacity of some 140 million tonnes per annum. Dampier has about the same. By comparison, Gladstone, on the east coast, has a capacity of about 60 million tonnes per year.

Australia is not a manufacturing nation. Nearly all of our household goods come into Australia as imported goods by sea. Our refrigerators, computers, televisions and cars all come in on large sea freighters. These cargoes, on which our economy is so dependent, have almost doubled over the past decade. It is over the past decade that the previous Howard government’s shipping policies have been so encouraging of that growth. International sea freight increased from some 450 million tonnes, valued at approximately $120 billion, in 1996-97, to almost 700 million tonnes, valued at about $250 billion, in 2005-06.

During the past decade the Howard government took a range of initiatives aimed at reforming and enhancing the competition in the marine sector for the benefit of users of both international and domestic shipping and to ensure that shipping meets community standards in safety, marine environment protection and security. These days the area of security is more and more important. Also, the previous government took seriously the issues of marine safety and the care of the marine environment. Pleasingly, Australia has a reputation internationally for being one of the more vigilant conductors of port state control inspections.

There was a succession of maritime incidents in the early 1990s, and some of those incidents occurred off and around the coastal area of my electorate. On 21 July 1991 the Kirki, as it approached Lancelin and Cervantes—a little further south than my patch—lost its bow section in fairly heavy seas and spilled a quantity of light crude. She did not go down, fortunately. With some exceptional work, a very brave young man jumped onto the deck of the Kirki and secured a line. She was put under tow and finished up in the waters off Dampier—very calm waters, perfect for the salvage operation. In fact, I was fortunate—I think fortunate is the word—to be on board the Kirki during the salvage operation. It was a time I will not forget.

Speaking of port control inspections and necessary certification in relation to ship safety, I add that the deck of the Kirki was a 25-mil plate, and an inspection of the forward section where the focsle had snapped off revealed a product like metal chantilly lace that had been rusted through in just 20 years of operation and poor inspection. After a great deal of careful and well-recorded salvage work, the Kirki’s cargo of light crude was offloaded—and a valuable cargo it was. Despite aspirations that she would become a floating storage facility somewhere in the Singapore area, the Kirki was in fact dragged up on the beach and eventually cut up for scrap steel.

In February 1991, the Sanko Harvest went down off the coast near Esperance. She struck a reef and broke up, and some 700 tonnes of bunkers were lost and ended up on the beaches of the Cape Le Grand National Park. A successful clean-up operation of the foreshore continued for some nine weeks—a lot of hard work.

Between January 1990 and August 1991, six bulk carriers sank after loading iron ore in northern Western Australia. We may reflect on that now in total amazement—that we could allow such a thing to happen and that many lives and valuable cargoes were lost. We have to keep in mind, when we think of the necessity for this legislation, that clean-ups are very expensive. Clean-ups that are successful are very expensive, and the clean-ups that are less successful are even more expensive because they damage for a very, very long time our marine environment.

Following all of those incidents, of course, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and—at the time—Microeconomic Reform carried out an inquiry into ship safety. That was carried out, I am pleased to say, by the then member for Shortland. That was the rather famous—I think I can extend ‘famous’—Peter Morris, who was the member for Shortland from 1972 to 1998. I came in in 1998 and never had the pleasure of knowing Peter.

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