Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his enunciation of the very clear reasons why Labor is opposing the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. As we know, this bill seeks to deregulate the Australian domestic shipping industry. It will remove preference for Australian flagged and crewed shipping operating around the Australian coast.

I will just put this in some context in regard to my own case. The Australian coast is one of the largest coastlines of any nation in the world. In terms of my own electorate, I look after all the coastline in the Northern Territory and a part of the Indian Ocean in terms of Christmas Island and Cocos Island. So I have had a long-term interaction with the shipping industry and the needs of communities around the coast for access to shipping to provide goods and services, as well as for the port of Darwin for imports and exports and, of course, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for basic foodstuffs; their basic supplies coming from the Australian mainland. I have long been a supporter of the Australian shipping industry and the Australian crews who crew those vessels. This bill, however, will remove the preference for Australian flagged and crewed ships operating around the Australian coast. It does this by establishing a single permit system, granting access to ships of any nationality to work in our waters for a 12-month period. That, to me, raises some very serious concerns.

It significantly extends the period of exemption from domestic wages and wage standards for foreign ships. I have had cause to go onto foreign vessels in the past in Darwin just literally as a guest of the Waterside Workers Federation—this was before the MUA. When I went on board this vessel, and I can remember it vividly, it was about occupational health and safety issues and the wages being paid to foreign crews. The vessel that I visited was extraordinary in terms of its lack of health and safety, the oppressive conditions in which the crews worked and the pay which they received, which was far, far less than the standard required by Australian seafarers on Australian crewed vessels. This is what we are talking about here.

We are not just talking about having appropriate international standards; we are talking about foreign vessels doing jobs on Australian routes which should be done by Australian vessels, by Australian crews and under Australian wages and conditions. This is what this is about. And it is about the 10,000 people who work in the Australian shipping industry having the right to retain their jobs in that industry and not be exposed to vessels which will undercut their capacity to get jobs on the vessels on which they currently work because they are foreign flagged, have foreign crews, have foreign environmental standards to meet not Australian standards, and where the occupational health and safety records will, inevitably, be something that we need to examine very carefully and, of course, where wages and conditions will not have the oversight that they currently do with Australian crewed vessels.

The bill also changes arrangements for joining the Australian International Shipping Register by reducing international trading requirements and changing long-held industrial arrangements. These matters should be of concern to all of us. The bill seeks to repeal Labor's 2012 coastal trading laws, which were put in place as part of a broader package of taxation, regulatory and work-skills measures aimed at revitalising the Australian shipping industry. And it extends the non-application of the Fair Work Act standards to workers on foreign ships working in Australian waters.

Why would you do that? What you have in the back of your mind when removing the protections for workers on vessels in Australian ports? What could you possibly have as your motive? You would have thought that the government, working on behalf of the interests of all Australians, would say that it is extremely important that, in the context of these shipping arrangements, we should be looking after and protecting the rights of all workers who are in Australian ports whether or not they are on foreign crewed vessels. And they should be subject to the standards of the Fair Work Act, and appropriately so, and not have those interests and rights diminished by the government, which is moving to remove the application of the Fair Work Act standards on those vessels. Obviously, it extends the application of Third World wage levels to the coastal trade. It has been described by others as just Work Choices on water.

If you actually appreciate the nature of the work which is being done by Australian seafarers out of Australian ports on Australian crewed vessels and understand the importance they have for the local economy and the importance they have in ensuring that we have a high-standard maritime fleet with maritime workers who are properly trained, appropriately supervised and working under conditions which are deemed to be safe and working at wages and salary levels which are appropriate to what they do, to then have a proposal which says, 'We're going to remove all those regulatory requirements about wages and conditions and the owners of the industry will be better off having foreign flagged vessels because that will mean that they will not have to pay Australian wages and conditions,' to me is an indictment on this government.

We all know where we sit in the world, the nature of our economy and the fact that we depend on shipping for 99 per cent of our trade. Why wouldn't we be protecting the interests of Australian seafarers? We have, as has been described by others, the fifth largest shipping task of any nation in the world and 10 per cent of the world's trade by weight is carried by a ship to or from Australia. I think I made the case that it is in Australia's interests, economically, to have a sustainable and viable shipping industry. It is in our national security interests that we have a sustainable and viable shipping industry just as it is in our environmental interests to ensure that we have a safe, sustainable and viable shipping industry. As others have said and the shadow minister has pointed out, that is what Labor's 2012 reforms were all about.

These reforms need time to work and a government that is actually committed to promoting Australia's national interest in shipping. Oddly—and this should be of no surprise to us—this government has ignored the fact that most of Australia's trading partners strongly regulate their own coastal shipping cabotage, for national interest reasons. That should be of no surprise to us. We should understand it. I am sure most of us do but, for some reason or other, the Australian government believes it should apply a different standard, here, from one that our major trading partners apply at home.

The United States has the Jones Act, which bans foreign ships and crews from its coastal trade. Japan, Canada and countries of the European Union do similar things. So if it is okay for our biggest trading partners and advanced western economies to regulate the coastal shipping trade, what is it that is peculiar about Australia that would force us to deregulate our shipping trade? Is it the fact that we have a Liberal government? That is the only thing I can think of. They are ideologically opposed to the idea that we might have a sustainable shipping industry in this country, one which is paying our seafarers fair wages and conditions and ensuring that we have a sustainable and viable coastal shipping industry. I would have thought that is—peculiarly—in our national interests. It appears that this government has decided that is not the case. They are happy to expose our shipping industry and the Australian community to the vagaries and uncertainties of international shipping companies visiting Australia and taking over the work that Australian flagged vessels currently undertake.

Under the proposals before us, ships with so-called flags of convenience are placed on exactly the same level as those that are Australian flagged. All Australian flagged vessels are subject to stringent Australian standards of safety, environmental compliance, taxation and industrial relations, both here and on the open sea. Importantly, these are Australian standards. They are what we expect of Australians who work onshore, but now we are saying we do not expect these same standards to apply to Australians who work on vessels. More importantly, we do not really want Australians working on these vessels; we want foreign crewed vessels, flagged from foreign ports, coming to Australia and taking that work off them.

As the member for Wills pointed out, we do not deregulate the Australian trucking industry and provide the opportunity for trucking companies from overseas to bring whatever vehicle they like onto Australian roads, to not have them registered under Australian conditions, not pay their drivers Australian wages, not have them regulated for the hours they work and all the other occupational health and safety issues that the trucking industry is governed by.

We will not have that happen, but we will allow it to happen in the shipping industry, despite the fact that we think it important we have a shipping industry. In the maritime industry you can do what you like. Take away all regulation. You can use whatever vessel you want from a foreign port and with a foreign flag. And you can bring a crew from wherever you like and pay them whatever you like, under the conditions you can determine that are acceptable to them, provided you are able to employ them, in the first place.

There is no question at all that this is Work Choices on water. As has been mentioned, 88 per cent of the government's estimated savings from the bill comes from the sacking of Australian workers and replacing them with 90 per cent foreign crews paid with third-world wage rates. That is what this bill is about. The government's own modelling makes no account for the cost of lost Australian jobs, lost local spending in local economies, lost local taxation and the inevitable increased welfare spending that will result from this dreadful package.

The government's official modelling assumes that the removal of Australian workplace standards will occasion significant sackings, including in Tasmania and the burgeoning Australian crews sector operating in the north of Australia. I see these vessels in Darwin all the time. What you are effectively saying to them, and we have heard this from an operator on the north-west coast, as it was suggested to this person, 'Get a foreign flagged vessel and bring a foreign crew and you can do what you like.'

That is not acceptable. It would not be acceptable on the Australian mainland, it is not acceptable on the waters of our coast and it will not be acceptable to the Australian community. As we know, around 10,000 Australian workers are in employment as a result of this industry. It is a vital local industry. It is a sustainable local industry. It is a good Australian industry, which needs to be protected—and not thrown to the wolves in the way this government proposes to do.

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