Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is right. That was when we had enlightened governments in Western Australia that recognised the importance of this for regional WA. But a traditional coastal shipping company service running through the coastal ports of WA would often go into the Northern Territory. You could argue that that is 'directly' engaged in interstate—even though it is a territory—trade, but is it 'substantially' engaged in interstate trade if, for example, five of the ports that it goes to are Western Australian ports and it goes on to one port in the Northern Territory? It might cross the threshold for 'directly', but does it cross the threshold for 'substantially'? Suggesting that this rushed bill, with its 'directly and substantially' provision, is going to provide clarity is not a no-brainer. There is still real uncertainty.

There has also got to be some logic about whether or not this is a good system. We have the government coming in here very often talking about the need for national consistency, the need for there to be a clear pathway. Many of the coastal shipping activities in Western Australia, for example, are involved in the offshore oil and gas industry—both exploration and actual offshore oil and gas production. So we have rig tenders, which service both the exploration and the drilling rigs; seismic vessels; and exploration vessels. And, of course, when FLNG commences, there will be vessels going and servicing those facilities.

It is a very interesting delineation because we know that, for example, if we look at the Torosa field in the Browse Basin, that was considered up until a few months ago—and I think passing through this parliament—to be out of state waters and in Commonwealth waters, so it would have been covered by the seafarers act. But due to some detailed surveying of the land, we found what had been mislabelled as the 'golden rocks'. These golden rocks meant that the Torosa retention lease actually turns out to be substantially in WA coastal waters, and these are a series of rocks no bigger than a large table that have changed the boundary of Commonwealth and state waters. So, a vessel might be going out to deal with the Browse Basin—doing exploration in the Browse Basin—and one day it would have been considered to have been in Commonwealth waters, and now it is considered to be in WA waters.

Suddenly, if the Seafarers Rehabilitation and Compensation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 passes, we find that the sets of circumstances that regulate the long-term welfare, compensation and entitlements of the respective seafarers will change. That seems to me to be quite implausible. You might have, for example, someone taking the ship out to the Prelude—taking a vessel out from Broome to the Prelude lease—and they will be on one set of formulations and the same person, doing exactly the same work, if the next time around they are rostered on a vessel that is going out to that part of the Browse Basin, to the Torosa lease, for example, will have a very different compensation regime. That does not seem to be very sensible to me. It does not seem to be in keeping with the sort of logic that we often use to argue that we need to have a consistent set of workplace practices and workplace arrangements across similar circumstances.

As I say, an increasing amount of the coastal shipping in WA is servicing the offshore oil and gas industry, and this is going to create a really quite bizarre situation of the same people, depending on what ship they are rostered on for a particular timeslot, having very, very different workers compensation entitlements. There is no case for this bill to be rushed through. It is important to ensure that we have some certainty and clarity, but this is something that needs to be properly worked out through a tripartite process taking in to account all these myriad factors. It should not be something that is rushed through because of an ideological inability for this government to participate in tripartite forums.

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