Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, my question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on how changes to the coastal shipping regulations will boost Australian jobs and ensure its sustainability into the future?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Braddon for the question—representing the island state of the island country. Shipping is particularly important to Tasmania but shipping is also important to the whole of the nation, and having a competitive shipping industry could make a real difference to the way in which we deliver our freight task in Australia as well as ensuring that we are able to export and import commodities in the most efficient possible way.

We have the fourth largest shipping task in the world because of the bulk commodities we export and the products we bring into this country. But instead of us having a healthy and vibrant shipping industry, we have one that is in steady decline. Labor, when they were last in office, introduced a coastal trading act. They did this because the MUA, the union that is one of their masters, and which has essentially presided over a steady decline in the Australian shipping industry over a very long period of time, insisted that they do it. As a result, Labor promised us that we would end up with more people employed in shipping, we would have more Australian ships and a more efficient industry. Precisely the opposite has happened. Since Labor's legislation was introduced, there has been a 64 per cent decline in the tonnage of Australian flagged ships. In addition to that, the volume of coastal freight carried by ships has reduced by 2½ per cent a year—reduced! At a time when our national freight task is growing enormously, shipping share is in steady decline because of the legislation that Labor introduced.

The cost of shipping around Australia has gone up enormously. Bell Bay Aluminium say that their freight went up 63 per cent in the first year of this program. The reality is that Labor's shipping reform has been a disastrous failure. There is not a single ship registered on the second register that was created under Labor's legislation, and that is because the MUA effectively have a veto over that whole operation.

We need to reform shipping in this country. We want Australian ships to do well, but we also need to ensure that we have got the most efficient shipping task possible. Why is it that it is twice as expensive to take a container from Melbourne to Brisbane as it is from Melbourne to Singapore? Because of the cost structure of this industry we are costing jobs in manufacturing and other Australian industries and we are continuing to lose jobs in shipping.

This government wants to reform the Australian shipping arrangements so that we can get rid of the red tape—the 1,000 or more hours of additional red tape—that Labor imposed through this legislation. That is the kind of thing that can make a difference to make sure that shipping can play its proper role in moving our freight around the country.