Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Vasta—my electorate neighbour—for letting me continue my response to the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, which was rudely interrupted by question time and matters of public importance! This bill, more readily known as Work Choices on water, has some dubious claims. Eighty-eight per cent of the savings the government estimates will flow from this bill will be due to Australian workers being replaced by foreign crews. That is a disgrace. There is a real question about how many of those foreign crews will be working for Third World wage rates.

If I could flag the racism of the free market, where people seem to be more relaxed when foreign workers from poorer countries are being exploited here in Australia. We have seen it in the Four Corners expose of the workers in 7-Eleven; I have seen it in Queensland with some Taiwanese backpackers being exploited around Bundaberg, in some of the agricultural areas, where they were not being paid award wages. It does happen. Maybe it also happens to the Irish and the Americans and the Kiwis and perhaps people from other countries, but I think sometimes in Australia we can be more relaxed when it is a foreign worker from a poorer country, with the suggestion that because they would not have received such compensation in their own country it is somehow acceptable. That is not the Australian way.

This is an extremely short-sighted cost saving measure with no consideration for either the Australian workers who will be replaced on these ships or the foreign workers who will be working under conditions that we would not find acceptable. As we know, when people are at sea, literally a different set of rules applies and it can be hard to catch up and find and interview people and find out what went on. I have seen that, and the member for Isaacs would have seen that when he received the report on crimes at sea when he was the Attorney-General—the problems with finding reliable witnesses to what goes on beyond our coastline.

Under this bill only a very small number of senior positions will be required to be filled by an Australian citizen or resident or a person with a valid visa. How will Australian seafarers gain the necessary experience to move through the junior positions and eventually fill the senior positions if there will be no jobs available for them? It is like a lemmings policy, whereby the maritime industry will eventually go over the career cliff. It will start with a couple of senior positions but eventually the opportunities will ossify. It is not only the value of experienced Australian seafarers being in senior positions on ships in our waters but also the value of those experienced seafarers later taking onshore jobs that ensure the safety of our coastline as they do now. We will not have enough experienced Australian seafarers to take up these positions.

The National Maritime Training Partnership, which includes the Australian Maritime College at the University of Tasmania, in its submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport urged that the committee consider the effect that this bill would have on the next generation of seafarers in Australia, particularly Tasmanians, whose state has particular unemployment challenges. The National Maritime Training Partnership sought inclusions in the bill that would:

… help provide a pathway for the next generation of seafarers into meaningful positions of responsibility on board ships trading around the coast of Australia. Importantly this pool of qualified mariners will help provide for the next generation of mariners to fill positions ashore in education, regulation, marine pilotage and port management.

I particularly highlight marine pilotage, which I will return to in a minute. Having crews with local knowledge of shipping channels also aids in the environmental protection of Australian waters.

There have been a number of serious incidents in recent years that have put at risk our valuable environmental assets, such as the Great Barrier Reef—I say to a fellow Queenslander. In 2009, 230 tonnes of fuel oil, 30 tonnes of other fuel and 31 shipping containers containing 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate spilled into the Coral Sea north of Moreton Bay. The then Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, declared at the time that it was the worst environmental disaster Queensland had ever seen. The disaster was caused by unsecured cargo on the Hong Kong registered MV Pacific Adventurer. The spill washed ashore along the 60 kilometres of Queensland coastline, which included the Sunshine Coast—a great tourist spot—Moreton Bay, Bribie Island and Moreton Island, named after the same Lord Morton as my electorate is named after, with a different spelling.

In 2010 a 750-foot Chinese bulk coal carrier, MV Shen Neng1, ran aground east of Rockhampton. This vessel struck the Great Barrier Reef, scraping along the reef for a considerable distance and causing a very large grounding scar. The ship was 10 kilometres outside of the shipping lane. The vessel's fuel tank was damaged and an oil slick of heavy fuel oil ran for two nautical miles. Chemical dispersants were used to break up the oil slick. This incident alone posed a serious risk to our Great Barrier Reef.

As recently as this year, the ship's master of the China Steel Developer, a Taiwan flagged bulk carrier, was charged with failing to take on a pilot prior to navigating the Great Barrier Reef. The general manager of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, Andrew Skeat, said about the incident:

For certain sections of the Great Barrier Reef and for particular types of vessels, the use of pilots is mandatory because they greatly enhance protection of animals, habitats and sensitive areas of the Marine Park, including coral reefs.

… … …

The potential environmental, economic and social consequences could have been severe if an unescorted voyage had gone wrong.

All three of these incidents occurred off the Queensland coastline, and we all know how important tourism is to the Queensland economy. As a Queenslander I am particularly concerned about damage to our local natural assets. These are very large vessels using the shipping lanes that surround our coastal waters and in some cases navigate through the Great Barrier Reef itself. Local knowledge of our waters and our environmental assets is vital. It is also vital that crews on board ships in our waters are not compromised by poorer working conditions which could lead to fatigue and bad decisions being made by those in charge of these very large vessels operating near important and valuable natural assets.

Another important consideration in terms of what this bill will impact on is the screening of shipping crews using our waters. It is a much more difficult task to screen foreign crews. The impact of this bill is that the majority of the mariner crews using our waters will be foreign. The cost of the extra screening that will be required has not been factored into the costs of this package, and neither can we effectively assess the efficacy of such background screens. This bill, far from fostering our Australian shipping industry, will give foreign flagged shipping an advantage over Australian flagged vessels. We heard this played out in the Senate a few weeks ago. Australian companies would be at a disadvantage in their own territory. In fact, there was the suggestion that Australian public servants were informing Australian shipping agencies that it would be to their advantage to get rid of their Australian crews and bring on foreign sailors. Australia does not allow other forms of domestic transportation methods, such as planes, trains, freight trucks and buses, to operate by using overseas registration or overseas pay conditions. Australia's shipping industry is important. And as I have seen from my background in looking at the cruise industry, if you do not have standards that are going to be enforced by regular audits and checks, then anything can happen when the ships slip beyond Sydney Harbour.

Workers in Australia's shipping industry are important and should be working for Australian pay and under Australian conditions. Our future generation of seafarers should be allowed to continue the rich history of Australian seafarers who have gone before them. Their skills should be honed through working on Australian flagged ships in local waters so that they can become the senior experienced seafarers who will protect our coastline into the future. It is better to have Australians working on our docks looking after decisions that are made about our cargo, because the reality is there will always be people who will try to smuggle things into Australia. It is better to have Australian seafarers making decisions about what goes on in the ships and on the docks rather than people with loyalty to foreign nations.

Our environmental assets, such as the Great Barrier Reef, are too important to risk. These should be protected to every extent that they can be via these laws. A little bit of economic nationalism goes a long way in this area. Our shipping regulations play a very important role in these protections. We do not want to have an escalation of the incidents I have detailed already. Work Choices on water should not go ahead, and that is why I will not be supporting this bill.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is an island nation, and the waters that surround our island are the highway that ships travel to deliver goods to Australians and to take goods from Australia overseas. In actual fact, 99 per cent of shipping is based on trade. We have the longest coastline in the world and the fifth largest shipping task of any nation. Ten per cent of the world's trade by weight is carried by ships either to or from Australia, and what does this government want to do? It wants to destroy the Australian shipping industry. This government, or should I even say those on the other side of this House, have always had an ideological hatred of the Australian shipping industry. They have never appreciated its value to our nation. They do not get it. They do not understand how vitally important it is for Australia to have a strong shipping industry that has ships crewed by Australians.

I believe this legislation is driven by the Abbott-Turnbull government's ideological hatred of maritime workers and the Maritime Union of Australia. This government does not like the MUA, and it will go to any extent to destroy that union, even if it means destroying our shipping industry along the way, even if it means making sure that 1,000 Australian mariners are left without jobs. That is not a concern to this government. Unfortunately, this government is committed to introducing Work Choices on the water, as many of my colleagues have said before me. It is driven by the wishes and desires of the Business Council of Australia. Not only is this legislation not supported by the MUA and maritime workers and many of the industries associated with shipping, it is also not supported by the ship owners. So here we have a government pushing legislation through this House that will lead to job losses, and it will lead to a situation that is not supported by anyone in the industry. It will lead to a situation where we do not have an Australian shipping industry.

When I first saw this legislation I asked: 'What does it deliver to Australia? Will it make our shipping industry stronger?' I have already answered that—no. Will it lead to the development of some other industry? No, there is absolutely no evidence of that. Will it help Australian workers? This legislation condemns Australian mariners to unemployment, and I will touch a little bit more on that in a moment. Will it be of economic benefit for the country? Once again no. We are losing an industry and we are actually allowing Australian jobs to be replaced by mariners from overseas who receive very low wages and work in appalling conditions. There are many practices that take place on these ships of convenience that this government is so keen to see replace the shipping industry and the mariners that we have today.

What will it mean for the security of our nation? Australian mariners currently have to get a maritime security identity card, and every time they arrive at a port they have to present their cards. But foreign workers do not have the same requirement, so when it comes to security and monitoring those workers on ships, that does not even measure up.

I have to ask, 'What is the motivation?' I can only see that this motivation is driven by an ideological hatred of Australian mariners and of the union that supports those workers and by a total lack of commitment to an Australian shipping industry. I might add that this is very different to what is happening in other countries. For instance, in the United States they have the Jones Act, which bans foreign ships' crews from its coastal trade. Canada, Japan and nations of the European Union have similar practices in place. So here we are in Australia, with the largest coastline of any country in the world, deciding that we want to get rid of our shipping industry. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is a bad decision.

I do not know if any members on the other side of this House have ever been on a flag-of-convenience ship. Currently, there is the single-voyage permit and the continuing voyage permit, and then you have your Australian ships. I have been on one of these foreign flagged ships, and when you go onto these ships the conditions are nothing like the conditions on the Australian flagged ships. They are often just rust buckets, and the conditions that those workers live and work under are absolutely appalling.

When the former member for Shortland, my good friend the Hon. Peter Morris, was in this parliament he was chair of the then Transport , Communications and Infrastructure Committee. The deputy chair was Paul Neville, who was then the member for Hinkler. They did an inquiry into these flag-of-convenience ships, and the report that was brought down was the Ships of shamereport. There are a lot of new members on the other side of this parliament, and I suggest that they pick up that report and have a look at it because there is a lot of information in there that shows exactly the conditions that mariners on those ships live and work under.

This government just do not care. All they are doing is answering to their masters on the Business Council of Australia. They are not concerned about the shipping industry and not concerned about the workers. They certainly are not looking towards the economic stability of our country, looking towards the types of industries that we wish to have, looking towards the security of our nation or looking towards the fact that we need to have a vibrant maritime industry. We are an island nation, and this has implications when it comes to the security of Australia not only with allowing workers into the country and with the level of security checks on those mariners but also because we need to have a vibrant merchant navy in times of conflict or such.

I am yet to find one reason why this legislation should be supported. It is really evil legislation. It is ideological driven. It is extreme. It is pushing an extreme right-wing agenda. It removes reference to reviving the Australian shipping industry, which Labor put in place when they were in government because they could see the benefits of having a vibrant shipping industry in an island nation like Australia with ocean borders and with the coastline that we have here in this country.

This government's new law really extends the non-application of the Fair Work Act's standards to foreign workers on foreign ships in Australian waters and it significantly extends the application of Third World wages to coastal trade. This is about forcing shipowners to employ overseas workers and then pay them Third World wages. Those wages are, I think, about a third that of the wages that are paid to Australian mariners. If members on the other side were to take the time to read the Ships of shame report which Peter Morris brought down, in some cases they would find that invariably the workers do not even receive those wages. There have been numerous documentaries done on this particular issue, and to see Australia going down this track of being prepared to forsake our shipping industry is an absolute crime.

This bill deregulates the Australian domestic shipping industry by removing preference for Australian flagged and crewed ships operating in and around Australia. It really does symbolise the attitude of this government to Australian workers and jobs. Instead of the three-tiered system that there is at the moment, there is a single-tiered system for granting access to coastal shipping. This is to be able to work the Australian coastline for a 12-month period. It extends the period of exemption for non-domestic standards, and these ships will not even be required to have one Australian worker on them unless they are in Australian waters for more than 183 days.

When members on the other side of this House have time to think about this legislation and before they vote for it, they should think about Australian workers, like the man I was talking to last week who said, 'I get a decent wage, but I'm away from home for six weeks. Whilst I'm away, my wife has to look after the children. She does everything.' They actually have a disabled child, and there is enormous pressure on the family. He said, 'But I'm prepared to do that because I get the compensation that I get. If I lose my job, I don't know what I'll do.' It is similar to the situation of those mariners on the Alexander Spirit, who were told that they would be redundant when they got to Singapore, or like the department advising Bill Milby that he should sack his Australian crew and employ foreign workers.

This demonstrates this government's commitment to Australian workers and that is why the legislation that is before the House is Work Choices on the water, legislation that is going to undermine our shipping industry, legislation that is going to undermine Australian workers. It is bad legislation and no member of this parliament should support it. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a most famous letter by Edward Granville Theodore, whom Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating and a humble person such as myself consider to be the most important person in Australian history, written to Ben Chifley, he said: 'The most important job of government—in fact, the job of government, and I don’t just mean the politicians; I include in that the captains of industry and the media—is to provide jobs for its people.'

Here we have a government initiative to take jobs away from its people. It is a fairly simply formula and it is from the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia—to the shame of the people in his electorate who voted for him. They really should feel ashamed of themselves if they do not know that their member of parliament is out there saying that Americans work for $8 an hour, exactly the same figure that the lady mining magnate from Western Australia uses—$320 a week. We know that she is a very strong supporter of the National Party and their viewpoint. Clearly, they are a very strong supporter of her viewpoint, that we should work for $320 a week in Australia. That is $15,000 a year. In this country, the average price of accommodation is $20,000 a year. Clearly, for starters you would have them living under trees. If you think that that is an exaggeration then you ought to go and look at some of the poor people in your electorates, and it does not matter what electorate you are in. Conditions are rapidly deteriorating for the poor people in Australia. The number of poor people is increasing dramatically.

What is the purpose of government if it is not to create jobs and prosperity for the people? It says: 'Services are up to the private sector now. They will provide your water, your electricity. That will all be privatised.' What do we have government for? Is it there to protect us against the excesses of the corporation? That would be a funny joke! You have to look no further than the infamous Hardie case, where ALP government after ALP government ignored them and then Liberal government after Liberal government ignored them, and people were dying of cancer. That is not new in Australia.

A hundred years ago, one in 30 went down the mines and never came back up again. They died the terrible death of miner's phthisis. The first member for Kennedy was one of those people who left politics dying of miner's phthisis. The second Prime Minister of Australia, Andrew Fisher, saw his father die of miner's phthisis. He left politics dying of miner's phthisis. The first Labor Premier and a world leader in world history came from one of my hometowns, Charters Towers, also left politics dying of miner's phthisis. So do not for the government to protect us from the excesses of the corporation. What the hell is government there for if it is not there to provide jobs and prosperity for its people?

The government think it is its job to take jobs and prosperity away and hand it over to the giant corporations that own the shipping—which is not owned by Australians. They might say, 'We're free marketeers; we're with America. They're free marketeers.' They are on shaky ground there because the Jones Act says of intercoastal shipping—which is what we are talking about here; port to port within Australia, port to port within America—that the ship must be totally American owned, totally American crewed and totally built in America. We are saying the exact opposite of the Jones Act. Either the Americans are correct and the rest of the world are correct or, once again, the government of Australia is Mr Cleverness—the only Mr Cleverness on the planet. I know which way I am going to be betting.

The Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 says that so long as you keep a ship out of Australia for one day more than six months, you do not have to have any pay and conditions; you can employ people on an average Asian wage level of around $5 a day—that is what you can do and that is all right. Only 2,000 Australians will lose their jobs. We ordinary Australians are a bit sick of hearing this. Up in North Queensland, Mr Keating said, 'It's only 900 jobs you're going to lose.' It was 2,000 and they closed the timber industry. 'It is only going to be 4,000 over here and only 6,000 over there. It's only going to be 55,000 in the car industry. It's only been nearly 100,000 in the whitegoods industry. It doesn't matter, there will be something to take its place.'

Have a look at the dollar. Even though you have interest rates a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world—you are on two per cent, the rest of the world is on 0.2 per cent—you still cannot hold the dollar up. People are saying: 'Hold on, what's this country about?' 'They are about iron ore and coal.' 'Iron ore and coal? We're getting of here real quick.' That is what is happening. To the people who sit in this place—and I wrote a successful history book and I can clearly see the judgement of history and the judgement that it passes upon people—if you think that the judgement of history is not going to catch up to you, you believe in the tooth fairy.

There was a wonderful exchange between Mr Keating—the architect of the modern age; Mr Free Market himself—and George Bush Senior. Mr Keating said, 'President, we would like you to give our Australian farmers a fair go.' George Bush said, 'I'm in the business of looking after American farmers,' and walked off. There is a message there. Would to heaven that we had a leader in Australia who said, 'I'm here to look after Australian farmers not to create free markets.'

The imbecility, which has been one of the contributing factors to him losing his prime ministership, was for the Prime Minister to stand here and clap the minister for trade after the free trade deal with China. They thought it was a good thing. If anyone in Australia thought it was a good thing, I have not run across them. They said it was a good thing for the beef industry. The benefit for the beef industry is 2c on a plate of beef in China. Before the free trade deal it cost you 30 bucks to buy a stake in Beijing. After the free trade deal it was 30 bucks less 2c. That will make a difference to trade with Australia!

People on the government side of this parliament are locked into a belief system that says the problem is wages and that if we cut the wages—to quote the Deputy Prime Minister—to American levels of $8 an hour all will be well in this country. It is rather interesting for me, who comes from a state where, in 1990, we were forging ahead on all fronts. We were pro-immigration because we desperately needed workers for our exploding economy in Queensland. We had the exact opposite attitude of the Labor Party, which is a rabid free-marketeering party, and the Liberal Party, which wants to outcompete them to be the most rabid free-marketeering party on earth. If there is some other country on earth participating in a free-market economy could you point it out to me? It most certainly is not Brazil. It most certainly is not China. It most certainly is not Russia. It most certainly is not America. Where is this free-market economy? Maybe it exists, somewhere, but I have not been told about it.

There is not a single person in this House who would not know that there are no free markets in these countries. They are out there to win. They see it as their duty and responsibility to create jobs and prosperity for their people. They are not sitting back, saying 'It's got nothing to do with me. It's the Liberals' fault that we're closing down the car industry,' or 'It's the Labor Party. It's their fault that the car industry is closing down.' No, they are out there ensuring that their car industries stays open, that their shipping industries—like we are talking about here today—stay open and provide jobs for their people. You come into this place and call yourself an Australian. It is like that sign we see everywhere: 'If you are a Christian, what did you do today to prove it?' If you are an Australian, what did you do today to prove it? Every single day that I have sat in this parliament it has seemed to me that we are doing everything humanly possible to prove that we are not Australians. Future generations will pass an extremely harsh judgement upon these people.

As for America with this $8 an hour, I know a lot of Americans and they do not know anyone who works for $8 an hour. There is no doubt that California is the biggest agricultural juggernaut on earth, with their great irrigation developments, moving water great distances. You must admire them as a race of people for what they have done in irrigating Southern California, which is one of the driest and hottest places on earth, and turning it into a food bowl for the planet. But there is no doubt that they have low wage levels for a lot of their workers. They have the highest number of beggars in the world—more than India, would you believe? America has more beggars on its streets than India has. At one stage, California had more people in jail than in primary school. That is a pretty healthy sort of society, isn't it?

People won't starve. They will find a way to get money. They will thieve, they will sell drugs, they will do whatever they have to do. If you think people are going to live on $15,000 a year, for a wife and three kids, they are not. They will find some way around it, and they will find the way around it in the way people have in places like California.

The government said we will get cheaper shipping costs. They said we would get cheaper milk when we deregulated the milk industry. The price to the farmer would go down through the floor; therefore, the price to the consumer would go down. I recommend people read my book because it has all the statistics in there. It is only $39. Actually, you cannot get it now because we have sold out, I am proud to say. It is pretty simple. When they deregulated the dairy industry they thought: deregulate the labour market and deregulate the farming market.

When they deregulated the farming market, and dairying, they were on 59c the day before deregulation and 42c the day after. There was a 30 per cent cut in their income. So 7,000 or 8,000 dairy farmers exited the industry, taking about 20,000 workers' jobs and contractors with them. A lot of them exited in the most tragic manner possible. Sadly, I speak with authority on the subject. Did it benefit the consumer? No. Within 18 months the price had gone up not down. Yes, it went down by 3c for two days. The farmer went down 12c but the price went down 3c. It was not three days, it was about six months. Just to make it look good, they pulled it down by 3c for about six months. Then it went up very significantly. Over the next few years it went up over 20 per cent. Was it in the consumer's benefit? No, it was not.

What a concept—that if you pay slave labour wage levels that somehow we will benefit in our international competitiveness. Les Thiess, the great man, was going around saying, 'I pay the highest wages in the world', and taking great pride in saying that. The much maligned Bjelke-Petersen was able to say, 'We have the highest wage structures in the world'. It was what they skited about, not what they explained was the problem. It was our aspiration as a state—for Queensland. It was the aspiration of our great captains of industry, and a person like Andrew Forrest would fall into that category now. But we now define it as the problem, and people in this place define it as the problem. If they can show me an example where lowering wages has benefited us in international trade, I would like to see it. (Time expired)

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Liberal-National government has a new leader. Today, we are in day 2 of the parliament where the new leader and his new cabinet are in place. But the bill we are debating today absolutely bells the cat. The government might have a new head, but that head sits on the same rotting carcass as the last one. And it is rotten. Just look at what this bill does. What kind of government actively destroys the jobs of its citizens—and I mean actively destroys them—through a bill or a piece of legislation? They are not being destroyed inadvertently, not by unintended consequences, not by mistake or accidentally lost. What kind of government purposely sits down, develops a policy, drafts a bill, brings it to the House of Representatives and later to the Senate which actively and intentionally destroys the jobs of thousands of Australians? That is what we are debating today. This government has a new head but the same rotting corpse of a body.

This is an extraordinary bill that we debate today. What kind of government actively destroys the jobs of its citizens? The answer is really clear today: it is a Liberal government. We saw it under and Abbott and Hockey with the car industry. We saw them dare the industry to leave our shores. We saw it under Abbott and Hockey, and now in the new leadership team of Turnbull and Morrison, we see the active, intentional destruction of the Australian shipping industry. It has a new head, but it is the same rotten government—a job-destroying government with no regard for Australian workers. In fact, as demonstrated by this bill, it has active contempt for Australian workers and their jobs.

You could be forgiven, if you listened to the rhetoric over the last two days, for thinking that this government actually cares about opportunities and jobs. There has been nice rhetoric about innovation and start-ups, and that is a very important area. If Australia wants to prosper in the future, we need to build new industries. You will see that the opposition, dating back even further than the budget reply speech, have put out a number of polices involving start-ups and innovation, and we have been doing that for quite some time. It is really good to see the government, this week at least and for the first time in two years, starting to address the damage that they did to innovation and science over the last two years by beginning to try to rebuild confidence in that sector—that is a good thing. But prosperity and innovation in the future does not just come from the new. It also comes from taking care of the strong industry that we currently have and building it for the future. It comes from taking care of the many ways that a country supports its population and the many industries that support our future—taking care of those as well. Start-ups and innovation are really important, but what we have here is an absolute demonstration of a government that does not understand that what we currently have is also of value. A government that will actively shut down current, successful sectors is a government that beggars belief.

Let us have a look at what they are actually doing to the shipping industry. What does this bill actually do? It removes 'revitalising Australian shipping' from the objects of the Coastal Trading (Revitalising Australian Shipping) Act 2012. In other words: revitalising Australian shipping is no longer important to this government. They have removed it; it has gone; it does not matter. Revitalising Australia shipping? Not important. It replaces a preference for an Australian flag on ships working along the Australian coast with a complete indifference to flagging. In other words, it allows flags-of-convenience ships to be placed on the same level as the Australian flagged ships.

When you take an Australian flagged ship, you have a ship that is subject to Australian standards of safety, environmental compliance, and taxation and industrial relations both here and on the open sea. You have a ship that employs Australians. There are thousands of Australians employed on Australian flagged ships. If you remove the preference for an Australian flagged ship, what happens is that you will get more and more flags of convenience ships where those ships are not subject to the same standards of safety, not subject to the same environmental compliance and not subject to Australian industrial relations, which means they can pay their crews less and have them work under conditions that would never be acceptable in the Australian way of life. What this means is that Australian flagged ships will not be able to compete with foreign flagged ships and our shipping industry will essentially go completely.

Last month in the Senate inquiry into this bill we heard that the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development had been advising Australian shipping companies that in order to compete in Australia under this proposed legislation, they should drop the Australian flag, register overseas rather than here and sack their Australian workforce—just sack them. That is what the department was advising shipping companies to do when this extraordinary piece of legislation comes into force. We have a government suggesting that companies sack their Australian workforce and employ cheaper overseas labour—an extraordinary thing.

So is this shipping industry a redundant one? Is this an industry that we might see fading in time anyway? Is this a government that is saying, 'Okay, things are changing.' That might be an excuse, but when you look at the Australian shipping industry it is clearly not the case. Australia is an island nation. We are a big one. We have a lot of coast and we are dependent on shipping for 99 per cent of our trade. That is not going to change—in fact, it will probably increase. We have one of the longest coastlines in the world and the fifth largest shipping task of any nation. This is not an industry in decline. This is not an industry that you walk away from as a government, let alone one that you actively seek to crush out of existence. Ten per cent of the world's trade, by weight, is carried by ship to or from Australia. This is an industry that should be a significant part of our economy, as it is now. This is an industry that a decent government would be working to protect and revitalise, not to crush. It is in Australia's economic, environmental and security interests to have a viable shipping industry and it is essential for the thousands of people who are currently engaged in that industry for their livelihood. There are thousands of them.

Is the government following other countries with this strange legislation? Perhaps there are models overseas and the government is saying, 'We'll bring our shipping legislation or regulation in line with that of other countries.' That also might be a reason. But, again, if you look around the world to equivalent countries, it is not the case. In fact, we would be alone in this. Comparable nations all strongly regulate their coastal shipping for national interest reasons—that is, domestic shipping, or shipping from one port to another within their borders. They have the kind of regulation that Australia currently has, which provides preference for their locally flagged ships. This includes the United States, which, via the Jones Act, bans foreign ships and crews from its coastal trade. Canada, Japan and the nations of the European Union do so similarly. In fact, Australia already has a coastal trading policy that allows participation of foreign ships where an Australian ship is not available. So we are already more flexible in our approach to preference for Australian ships than comparable nations. We already have legislation which many in the shipping industry would probably argue should be strengthened to bring them into line with comparable nations. We are already less regulated than our comparable nations. This piece of legislation will essentially remove all of that protection and wipe out what is an incredibly important industry.

Let us have a look at what the effect will be. It is not an overstatement to say that this legislation is Work Choices on water. In fact, it is worse than Work Choices on water—Work Choices essentially reduced the wages of Australians; this essentially wipes out the jobs of Australians. So it is probably an understatement to call it Work Choices on water. Eighty-eight per cent of the government's estimated savings from this bill are due to the sacking of Australian workers, replacing them with 90 per cent foreign crews being paid Third World wage rates. Eighty-eight per cent of the estimated savings comes from sacking Australian workers. What a government! They would walk into this place and argue for that; they would deliberately set about developing a policy where they openly admit that 88 per cent of their estimated savings are due to the sacking of Australian workers. The government's official modelling does not account for the cost of lost Australian jobs, lost local spending and local tax and higher welfare spending resulting from the sacking of those workers. The government's official modelling assumes that removal of Australian workplace standards will occasion significant sackings, including in Tasmania and in the Australian cruise sector based in northern Australia. Again—new head, same rotten carcass of a government. It is job destroying every day and continuing to do so this week in spite of the new rhetoric.

What should happen here? What should the government be doing here? I would argue that the fact that ships are plying our waters does not make them a different case than the trucks that ply our roads. It would not be acceptable, and Australia would be up in arms, if suddenly we allowed foreign registered trucks that did not meet our safety standards or our industrial relations standards to ply our highways and put Australian trucking companies out of business. We would not allow it. The population would be up in arms. In fact, there would probably be members of the government—even this government—who would be up in arms if that were the case. Yet this government is prepared to do that on our waters.

The issues with this legislation are not just with the jobs themselves but also with environmental protection. Australian flagged ships have very high environmental standards, especially in heavily used areas like the Great Barrier Reef. Recent incidents such as those of the Shen Neng in 2010 on the reef, the Pacific Adventurer in 2009 off the Sunshine Coast and the China Steel Developer in 2015 off Mackay—all foreign flagged vessels—underscore the risk that we put our natural assets in when we take this path.

There is also a security interest which is worth mentioning. We have a government that talks the talk—and has done for two years now—on security interests, but the screening of foreign crews is nowhere near as comprehensive as the screening of Australian crews. The Office of Transport Security acknowledges this. Without the kind of screening that this country needs in our waterways to keep us safe, there would be many more foreign sailors moving in and out of our ports.

On the whole, this is a dreadful piece of legislation that will decimate an incredibly important industry and that will leave thousands of Australian seafarers and their families in a position where they are much worse off than they are now. We will see our environmental protections weakened and our security protections weakened. I would urge the government, with its new head, to perhaps use it to rethink. It is not a good sign of a new supposed change in direction to be sitting in the House today debating a bill that will remove jobs from so many Australian workers in such a deliberate way. I condemn the government for this bill.

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There has, quite rightly, been a lot of discussion today, including by the member for Parramatta, about how the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 will result in significant job losses. That is a very important dimension of the debate and a very important downside to what the government is trying to achieve here—thousands of Australian workers in the maritime industries will lose their jobs.

But I would like to just focus a little on my home state of Tasmania, because those job losses—and I think the member for Parramatta made the point—will have a disproportionate effect in Tasmania. In fact, by some estimates, some 230 Tasmanians will lose their jobs as a direct result of this bill becoming law—230 workers in a state of just 500,000 people. Let us put that in perspective: that is smaller than the Gold Coast-Tweed Heads area; it is only a little bit bigger than the population of Canberra and only a little bit bigger than the population of Newcastle and Maitland. That is the size of the population in Tasmania. But 230 Tasmanians will lose their job as a result of the decision of this government if this bill eventually becomes law.

Tasmania is a state with a soft economy—a state where there have already been quite large job losses across a number of sectors in recent years. In fact, as a result of the decisions of this government and the previous government, 198 staff from the CSIRO in Tasmania have lost their jobs. As a direct result of the decisions of this government, dozens of staff at the Australian Antarctic Division have lost their jobs. As a direct result of the decisions of this and the previous government to not send defence work to the Prince of Wales Bay Defence manufacturing precinct in my electorate of Denison, we have not grown the economy and we have not employed more people. As a direct result of this government deciding not to spend $16 million of economic stimulus in the Glenorchy city area, which was promised through Cadbury before the last election, the economy there will not grow; it will stay soft; more people will not be employed. In fact, just last week Cadbury announced they are sacking 11 more workers at the chocolate factory at Claremont in Hobart. So we have a soft economy that desperately needs good public policy—desperately needs good decisions by this government. Yet here we are today talking about a bill which, if it becomes law, will directly result in thousands of Australians losing their jobs and over 200 losing their jobs in the small state of Tasmania.

It does not need to be this way. We do not need to deregulate the shipping industry in this country. We do not need to open up our coast to a free-for-all for foreign flagged vessels with cheaper crews. We do not need to take away the current requirements in the existing arrangements for companies shipping goods between domestic ports to first seek out an Australian vessel, which is the requirement under the current legislation.

Why we would do this beggars belief. It beggars belief! There is only one group of organisations and people in this country that will benefit from this, and that is business and business owners. It does not need to be this way, because this is ultimately a direct attack on Australian workers and a direct attack on the unions. Yes, fair enough: the current government has an ideological aversion to organised labour and to the unions—and, in particular, to the Maritime Union and the Institute of Marine and Power Engineers. But they should not let that ideological position result in bad public policy. It is as simple as that. They can think whatever they want about organised labour, but they should never let that dislike for organised labour result in bad public policy—particularly bad public policy like this bill that will result directly in thousands of Australians losing their jobs.

But do you know what? Even if the current government does want to look after its mates in big business, it is still missing the target in this case, because the current arrangements that are about to be axed, if this bill becomes law, will include the favourable tax breaks—the tax treatment—that had resulted in SeaRoad, a major Tasmanian corporation, deciding to buy two more vessels to a value of about $100 million. SeaRoad have already been on the front page, or near on the front page, of the Mercury newspaper saying that if this bill does become law then the purchase of those two new vessels, which are very important to that company—an investment of some $100 million—will not go ahead.

It is not good enough for some members of the government or for the Tasmanian members of the Liberal Party to stand up and say that this bill has overwhelming support in the community. It does not. It certainly does not have support from SeaRoad, who are likely not to invest $100 million as a result of this bill. It certainly does not have the support of TT-Line, which operates the two magnificent red and white ferries that travel between Victoria and Tasmania, which many members of this place have travelled on. Perhaps if the members of this House who have travelled on the Spirit of Tasmania had thought more about it, they might have realised that in fact TT-Line supports the current arrangements. In fact, TT-Line was one of the most energetic advocates during the previous parliament for these arrangements to be put in place.

Regrettably, this is more about ideology with the current government than it is about good public policy. In some ways, it is a diversion from the big issues.

One of the big issues, undoubtedly, is the decline in the Australian shipping industry. I see that in 1995—just 20 years ago—there were 55 Australian flagged coastal cargo vessels. By three years ago, it was down to 23—it had more than halved. Last year it was down to 18. This beggars belief. We are an island nation. Ninety-eight per cent of our imports and exports travel by sea. Yet we have 18 Australian flagged coastal cargo vessels. This is madness, whether you look at this from the point of view of transport security for industry or of national security in a time of conflict when, perhaps, some companies from some other countries may not be able to deliver the services they currently deliver. Surely we should be doing everything in our power to build up the Australian shipping industry. We should be coming up with policies that result in many more ships. In fact, we should even be considering the sorts of arrangements they have in place in countries like the United States.

I have heard mention today of the so-called Jones Act in the United States which requires that all merchandise transported between two ports within the jurisdiction of the United States be carried by a US flagged vessel, built in the United States, owned by a US citizen and crewed by American merchant mariners. Instead of debating this bill, why aren't we, in the public interest, debating the merits of some kind of Jones Act equivalent in this country? If it is affordable in other countries, surely it can be affordable in this country. Why can't we only have Australian flagged vessels, owned by Australian corporations or individuals and crewed by Australians doing all of the shipping between ports on our coastline, including the offshore energy sector? Why can't we do that? In part because of lack of vision. In part because of an ideological attack on workers and organised labour by this government. In part because of lack of ambition. In part because of lack of imagination to work out how to make this work. Why don't we have very generous tax concessions for companies and people who would want to make something like the Jones Act work in this country?

We need dozens and dozens and dozens of Australian owned vessels, Australian flagged vessels, Australian crewed vessels, plying our coasts. That will give certainty for Australian industry, that will bolster our national security and that will be the behaviour of a rich and clever maritime nation, instead of the absurdity at the moment where we have only 18 Australian flagged coastal cargo vessels. I am here defending the current arrangements because they are the best we have and they are under attack, but we should be in here debating how to fix the current arrangements to make them even more effective, in my opinion.

This bill is also a distraction from another very important issue. I will now bring this close to home, to Tasmania. We have a very significant shipping problem in and out of Tasmania. It costs too much to get people, vehicles and freight across Bass Strait. In fact, the cost of crossing Bass Strait is the single most significant brake on the Tasmanian economy and it is the easiest to fix. Over recent months, I have heard Liberal Party members and Tasmanian Liberal Party senators saying that this bill will fix that. That is patent nonsense. This bill will not solve the problems for Tasmania and the costs of Bass Strait. In fact, if anything, it will make those problems even worse, because SeaRoad, which I have referred to already—one of the major shipping lines in and out of Tasmania across Bass Strait—is seriously contemplating not buying two new vessels and not spending $100 million. Those new and more efficient vessels would significantly enhance shipping across Bass Strait and would promise to bring the cost of crossing Bass Strait down to some degree.

I am very concerned that we have had Tasmanian Liberal Party members and senators in this place and outside, in front of the media and in the newspapers, arguing in support of this bill. Heavens, I thought the job of a senator, for example, was to stick up for their state. It turns out that in Australia these days the job of a senator is to stick up for their party and their party's position, no matter how crazy it is. It would be much healthier for our country if particularly senators started arguing for their state. If they were arguing for their state, Liberal Party senators would be arguing against this bill in the Senate. They would be arguing against this bill because it will cost 230 jobs in Tasmania. They would be arguing against this bill because it will kill investment by the shipping lines operating in and out of Tasmania. They would be arguing against this bill for a whole range of reasons. They would be arguing against this bill because it is a distraction from the fundamental shipping problem affecting Tasmania, and that is the cost of crossing Bass Strait.

I obviously will not support this bill—I am sure that is quite clear—but I will tell you what the government needs to focus on. The government needs to scrap this bill. It is a dud. It is nothing more than pandering to their ideological obsession, with their mates in business, with their disinterest in Australian workers and with their sometimes hatred of organised labour. The MUA and the Institute of Marine and Power Engineers have done a lot for their workers over the decades, and workers in this country are all the better because of the efforts of organised labour.

I make the point again that it is very disappointing that the government would allow its dislike or even hatred of organised labour to result in a bill like this, which is fundamentally bad policy. I say again: the government should ditch this bill. It is a dog of a bill. It is no good. The government should start a conversation and start to work up a policy and draft legislation that would bolster the shipping industry in Australia. We need to turn this around and get from 18 vessels back to 23 vessels like we had in 2012, and get back to 55 vessels like we had in 1995, and even more again so that we have certainty for business, more jobs for Australians and improved national security. Along the way, we need to do everything that can be done to help Tasmania by fixing the cost of Bass Strait. It is crippling my state and this bill is a distraction from it.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too, like the previous speaker, seek to ask the government to rethink the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 and withdraw it. I agree that this is shocking legislation that seeks to destroy more jobs in our maritime industry. It seeks to destroy jobs and not create jobs. The bill comes at a time when this parliament and the Australian community are being asked to trust the government on the benefits of why we need to have free trade. We agree with free trade agreements, and we have made that very clear. But, as we said today in question time, and as Senator Penny Wong, our shadow minister for trade has said, and Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten has said publicly, we need safeguards in place to protect Australian jobs.

We are here again today debating another bill that seeks to remove safeguards that will protect jobs in our shipping industry, jobs that could benefit from increased free trade. As people on this side of the House have acknowledged, Australia is an island nation and depends upon shipping for 99 per cent of its trade. You would think we would be booming and there would be tens of thousands of people employed in the shipping industry in Australia. With all the talk about our growing exports, with the continual lift in the numbers that the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources stands up here and delivers every single day, you would think that there would be a proposal for increased jobs in the shipping industry, but there is not.

What this government is not telling the Australian people, what they are trying to slip through in this parliament, is sneaky legislation that seeks to take away jobs in the shipping industry. That is what this bill does. It introduces what they call flags-of-convenience ships, which will basically see cuts in wages and conditions. It will see foreign-crewed vessels coming into the Australian industry with workers who are paid much less than Australian workers. It is 'Work Choices on water' and it will cost the thousands of jobs we have in our shipping industry.

I would like to take a moment to read out some of the comments of the people who are at risk of losing their jobs, the very people that this government seeks to make redundant as a result of this legislation. These are the words of Alex Kirby, who spoke to a group of us in Brisbane. He works in the maritime industry. He is one of the workers who was sacked by Hutchinson Ports in Brisbane. He said he would like to take the opportunity to share his story. He is typical of a seafarer, of a worker on the docks and of an MUA member. I know when I say that word it scares the hell out of the government, because it is true that they do not like organised labour and they do not like unions. Who is Alex? He declares that he is an everyday working class man with a fantastic wife and a beautiful nine-year-old daughter at home. He says: 'These two ladies rely upon me to provide them with a home, food, clothing and all the essentials. I have been fortunate enough to do this successfully until now, because I was terminated in the middle of the night via email. Our family had no time to prepare financially. Our family had no time to mentally prepare for what happened to us.'

This is why governments matter. Governments are here to ensure fair, safe workplaces. Governments are here to ensure that we have workplace laws that ensure people's rights are protected so that workers who work in the maritime industry, or any industry, do not go through what Alex and so many of his co-workers went through on the Australian docks. Why is this relevant to this debate? It is relevant because the government is seeking to take away the reforms that were introduced by the former Labor government that protected and ensured Australian flagged ships and Australian wages and conditions.

When Labor took office in 2007 the Australian shipping industry was in a state of decline. Despite the fact that our exports were increasing and that we were increasing our imports, Australian shipping was in decline, meaning that Australian jobs—good quality, well-paid jobs—were in decline. Under the Howard government the number of Australian flagged vessels working the domestic trade routes plunged from 55, in 1996, to 21, in 2007. I cannot believe that it fell to 21, and, as we heard from the previous speaker, it is now down to 13. We are an island nation, a nation where we should be seeing an increased number of ships. We should be seeing an increased number of Australian-flagged ships and Australians working on those ships. If this government is serious about generating jobs during increased export/import trade arrangements, then back the Australian shipping industry and ensure that Australians get to benefit from those free trade agreements and that Australians in shipping get their jobs.

But what we have seen from this government and all of the backbenchers who have spoken about this, is that they are interested only in their mates in business. They are interested only in lowering costs for their mates in business. The way in which they are lowering costs for their mates in business, through trade, is in this bill. They are allowing flags-of-convenience ships, foreign-crewed ships, to come in and take the jobs of Australian flagged ships and Australian seafarers. What will that cost people? They are doing that by undercutting wages. Yes, Australian seafarers earn a high wage. They are high-skilled and they have been through training, even to having security permits and licences. It is expensive and quite often they either pay for it or their company pays for it. These are costs that Australian shipping companies and Australian seafarers bear themselves. If you are a foreign-flagged ship you do not need to have these particular costs. That is one of the ways in which they are undercutting.

We have also heard from some of the other speakers today about the appalling wages and conditions of some of the people who are working on these foreign-flagged ships. At the moment, and earlier this year, there was in fact a coroner's inquiry into what had happened where three Filipino workers had tragically lost their lives. That investigation is ongoing. So, not only do these foreign-flagged ships undercut the wages and conditions of Australian seafarers but they also are not safe. The safety standards and guarantees are not the same as Australian-flagged ships, which puts them at a competitive advantage.

The labour reforms, as I have said, introduced certainty and made sure that good wages and good conditions were at the forefront of our shipping industry. The aim was to support the Australian shipping industry within our own borders. It is something, as other speakers have said, that has occurred in other countries such as the United States, which this government tries to follow so often when it comes to health care and education but not when it comes to Australian shipping. As we have heard, the Jones Act in the United States was very similar to what Labor did in government. It ensured that, on the domestic seafaring route, United States seafarers had the work. In fact, the Jones Act went one step further and said that, if you wanted a ship sailing the domestic route in the United States, it also had to be built in the United States. Isn't that a positive proposal? Wouldn't it be great if the government got behind ship manufacturing in this country? Rather than deregulating the industry and having flag-of-convenience ships, wouldn't it be great if this government got behind similar legislation to the Jones Act whereby the ships were built here and flagged by Australians so that they had the benefits of these agreements?

The government likes to preach about the importance of trade. Let all Australians share in that trade opportunity, not just big business. Let Australian workers share in that trade by encouraging Australian-flagged vessels, rather than what we see in this bill, with the proposal to have wages and conditions undercut by foreign-flagged vessels. It is against our national interest for this bill to pass the House. The national interest of having an Australian industry is built on three tenets. It is very important to our security to have an Australian shipping industry. It is very important to our environmental interests. Whether it be in the north, around the Barrier Reef, or in the south, it is so important for environmental reasons that we ensure that we have an Australian shipping industry with Australian pilots navigating the Barrier Reef and Australian pilots sailing into our areas. This is why it is so critical that the government backs down on this reform and ensures that we have an Australian shipping industry and that Australians are involved in the Australian shipping industry.

Debate adjourned.