Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

) ( ): by leave—I move amendment (2) and amendments (4) to (14) together, as circulated in my name:

(2) Schedule 1, item 9, page 5 (lines 1 and 2), omit the item.

(4) Schedule 1, item 16, page 5 (lines 24 and 25), omit the item.

(5) Schedule 1, item 36, page 8 (lines 25 to 27), omit the item.

(6) Schedule 1, items 37 to 40, page 8 (line 28) to page 9 (line 13), omit the items.

(7) Schedule 1, item 41, page 9 (lines 14 to 17), omit the item.

(8) Schedule 1, items 42 and 43, page 9 (lines 18 to 25), omit the items.

(9) Schedule 1, item 44, page 9 (lines 26 and 27), omit the item.

(10) Schedule 1, item 45, page 10 (lines 1 and 2), omit the item.

(11) Schedule 1, item 49, page 10 (line 16), after "43", insert "or 51".

(12) Schedule 1, items 58 and 59, page 11 (lines 10 to 13), omit the items.

(13) Schedule 1, items 61 to 63, page 11 (lines 16 to 26), omit the items.

(14) Schedule 1, item 65, page 12 (lines 21 to 25), omit subitem (4).

I note the enthusiasm of the minister for our moving these 12 amendments en bloc, because these are important amendments to schedule 1 of the legislation. They would omit a range of items from the legislation. Currently there are two types of licence variations to an existing temporary licence: authorised matters—that is, a change to a loading date or volume on an existing planned voyage; and new matters—authorising an entirely new voyage on an existing temporary licence. In the name of streamlining, the bill proposes replacing the two types of licence variations with a single temporary licence variation provision.

I'm sure that the government will justify this by saying, 'Well, there are two things and we're putting them into one and that makes it streamlined.' What it does, though, is have massive implications. Reclassifying the addition of a new voyage to an existing temporary licence from a new matter to an authorised matter would halve, from the current two days to just 24 hours, the time available to a general licence holder—that is, an Australian based shipping operator—to apply for that new voyage.

One of the things that we know that the government has done in its decimation of the Australian shipping industry is that, for some voyages where a temporary licence was granted, it has replaced an Australian based ship—most notably, for example, the MV Portlandwith a foreign ship. The temporary licence was granted without proper notification for Australian based ships that might have wanted to compete to undertake that work. So the advertising processes and the way that the department has conducted some of these operations, under instruction from the government, have had very real consequences. As the member for Shortland reiterated in his contribution, the Portland was basically taking alumina from Western Australia to Portland. (Time expired)

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