Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, welcome back for the new year. It will be an interesting one, I am sure. I want to address the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2005 [2006], which makes disparate amendments to four maritime acts. I want to highlight some of the amendments and comment on how this bill addresses, or more accurately fails to address, deficiencies in the Howard government’s stewardship of Australian maritime policy.

Firstly, the bill amends the Lighthouses Act 1911 to provide for maintenance of maritime navigational aids and higher penalties for damaging aids or failing to report such damage. Labor generally welcomes these amendments.

The bill makes a significant number of amendments to the Navigation Act 1912, which is the principal Commonwealth act relating to the safety of ships. Among other matters, these amendments revise pilotage provisions to provide for compulsory pilotage in areas specified by regulation, revise provisions relating to the reporting of ship movements, revise provisions relating to alcohol and other drugs and allowing for the taking of mouth swabs to test for alcohol and other drugs, provide immunity from civil claims for pilots and pilotage providers, remove the requirement for six months notice before the minister can cancel a continuing voyage permit and increase penalties for major offences that pose a threat to life or the environment.

The bill also amends the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983. This act implements the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, known as MARPOL. The bill amends the act to require Australian chemical tankers to prepare and carry a noxious liquid substances plan, to provide that security paid by the owner or master in the event of a pollution breach must cover the maximum amount of penalties that may be payable by all members of the crew, and to clarify that documents that may be served on a ship’s agent include documents that may be served on the owner, the master or any member of the crew.

The Shipping Registration Act facilitates the registration of ships in Australia, grants ships Australian nationality and provides for the registration of mortgages over ships. The bill amends the act to provide that mortgages can be removed from the register at the request of the mortgagee, to allow the minister to delegate his or her powers under the act to a staff member of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and to provide for access to the Australian Register of Ships by electronic means.

Section 286 of the Navigation Act provides that the minister for transport may issue a single voyage permit or a continuing voyage permit to an unlicensed ship to engage in trade between Australian ports. A permit may only be issued if there is no licensed ship available or the service provided by the licensed ships is inadequate and the minister is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so. As already noted, the bill amends the act to remove the requirement for the minister to give six months notice of the intention to cancel a continuing voyage permit.

On 18 July last year, the Australian newspaper revealed details of an internal audit of the Howard government’s administration of coastal shipping under the Navigation Act. The audit of the administration was obtained under freedom of information laws by the newspaper’s freedom of information editor, Mr Michael McKinnon. The report is one of many documents obtained by the Australian despite fierce resistance from the Howard government. I have had some experience with the Howard government’s approach to freedom of information. Let me tell the Senate that, as far as the government is concerned, all the public are entitled to expect is freedom from information, and even then they should think themselves lucky. It is little surprise that the government resisted the release of this particular audit report.

This compliance review of coastal shipping permits was conducted by KPMG for the Department of Transport and Regional Services. It was completed in October 2004. It delivered a damning assessment of the government’s performance, finding that the administration of coastal shipping licences and permits for foreign vessels is a shambles. The audit revealed that one in six coastal shipping permits is granted without a signed application form, which according to KPMG means:

... the department risks granting a permit based on a bogus or unauthorised application.

The audit revealed: that inadequate financial controls mean that the government may be unaware of fraud, errors or other irregularities related to the licence and permit applications; that poor record keeping means data relating to more than one in five approved licence and permit applications is ‘absent or incorrect’; and that existing regulations are, in KPMG’s words, ‘out of date’ and ‘do not reflect current operating procedures’.

As if that was not enough, the report also found that the Department of Transport and Regional Services has breached the Navigation (Coasting Trade) Regulations 1937 and ministerial guidelines on the regulation of coastal shipping by failing to establish if a licensed ship is available before issuing a permit. Single and continuous voyage permits are only supposed to be issued when a licensed ship is unavailable and the minister for transport is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so. Unlicensed foreign ships granted single or continuous voyage permits are not required to pay their crew Australian wages when trading on the Australian coast—that is, foreign ships, many of them flag of convenience vessels, can undercut Australian wages and conditions when plying their trade on the Australian coast. And the Howard government has presided over the near destruction of the Australian coastal trading fleet while giving a leg-up to foreign shipping that uses substandard vessels and engages cheap foreign labour.

According to documents attributed to a spokesperson for the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Mr Truss, the government has addressed the deficiencies identified in the audit report. It took the release of the report under freedom of information for Mr Truss to publicly acknowledge the shambolic state of coastal shipping administration. The department expanded on Mr Truss’s concession in the form of an answer to a question on notice from the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee. The committee was told:

The recommendations have been addressed through changes in procedures for processing permits and licences, changes in records management practices and as part of a broader rewrite of the Coasting Trade Regulations. These amendments are close to finalisation.

We have not seen those rewritten regulations yet. But Mr Truss’s comments at the AusIntermodal 2005 conference in Sydney last year foreshadow a rewrite that has little relationship with the recommendations of the KPMG audit. You will not find Mr Truss’s remarks on his ministerial website, I might say, but a Lloyd’s List report published on 25 July reveals that Mr Truss believes that too much regulation exists in relation to coastal shipping. On the face of it, Mr Truss’s solution to his department’s administrative failings is the abolition of the few rules that regulate coastal trading activity—that is, Mr Truss cannot be sure he has got the capacity to enforce the rules, including his own ministerial guidelines, so he is thinking about getting rid of them altogether.

It is important to understand why the government’s failure to properly administer the cabotage system matters. First, it is clear from the findings of the audit that the lax administration of foreign ships on the Australian coastal trade places Australia at a heightened risk of maritime terrorists. The Department of Transport and Regional Services has been issuing permits in response to unsigned applications which, in the restrained words of the audit report, means it has risked granting a permit based on a ‘bogus or unauthorised application’.

It is no secret that the international shipping industry has a dark side. During the course of its inquiry into the introduction of maritime security identification cards, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee received this evidence:

International Maritime Security agencies accept that Osama Bin Laden owns a fleet of cargo ships all flagged under the ‘Flag of Convenience’ system. This system evades taxes, and most other regulated costs but more importantly provides the beneficial owner with the most effective veil of anonymity available in international trade.

There is no more effective veil of anonymity than a blank application form. In fact, I can hardly think of a way to make Australia more vulnerable to terrorist attack than by permitting foreign ships to sail from port to port without the inconvenience of lodging a signed permit form. It may come as a surprise to the minister for transport that foreign ships authorised by his government to trade on our coast carry things more explosive than navy beans; they carry things such as oil, chemicals, LPG and other goods, including ammonium nitrate.

The latest Australian maritime transport compendium commissioned by the Australian Shipowners Association contains a telling statistical tale about the growing use of foreign ships to transport goods around Australian ports. It reveals that since 1991-92 the number of permits issued to foreign ships has grown by over 325 per cent. In 2003-04, the last full year subject to the report, foreign vessels were permitted to carry 27.5 per cent of the Australian interstate and intrastate sea freight trade—up from eight per cent when Labor last held office. Foreign seafarers are not subject to the same rules that apply to Australian seafarers serving on Australian ships. Not only are foreign seafarers denied Australian pay and working conditions; they are not subject to the same security regime as Australian seafarers.

The soon to be implemented maritime security identification card regime does not impose additional requirements on foreign seafarers. Under the delayed maritime security identification card regime, truck drivers delivering goods to our ports will be subject to much more stringent background and identity checking than foreign seafarers.

Labor says the carriage of high-consequence dangerous goods like ammonium nitrate by foreign ships must stop now if Australia is serious about minimising the threat of terrorism. It should be clear to everyone that the safest way to transport high-consequence dangerous goods around Australia is on Australian ships crewed by Australian men and women subject to appropriate security screening. Secure ships and secure seafarers mean better protection for the Australian community. It is bad enough that the Howard government has facilitated an explosion in the number of continuous voyage permits issued for foreign ships. It is worse that the government is leaving Australia vulnerable because it will not or cannot regulate coastal trade according to the rules.

It is not just a matter of supporting Australian shippers and Australian maritime workers and it is not just a matter of keeping dangerous substances like ammonium nitrate out of the hands of terrorists; the increasing carriage of sea freight around our coast by foreign ships, many of them flag of convenience vessels subject to minimal regulation, puts our natural environment at risk. It is a matter of good luck, not good governance, that Australia has not seen a major environmental disaster associated with the carriage of chemical or petroleum products by one of the ships of shame. The Howard government’s neglect of shipping policy threatens our economy, it threatens our national security and it threatens our natural environment. It is time the Howard government ceased abusing the cabotage system. It should be enforcing the rules, not talking about walking away from them altogether.

There are other things the government should do to secure our maritime borders. The first concerns the enforcement of crew and manifest advance reporting. The government has a 48-hour rule in place—meaning that the manifest and the crew should be notified 48 hours before the vessel docks in Australian ports—but it does not adequately enforce that rule. Ships are turning up alongside wharves that have not lodged their crew and manifest details—in other words, no part of the 48-hour rule is being enforced. It is past time that this rule was enforced.

Labor calls on Mr Truss to do more than his predecessor, Mr Anderson, and fix the known deficiencies in maritime security. He could do worse than start by reading the report of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute entitled Future unknown: the terrorist threat to Australian maritime security. This report was arrogantly dismissed by Mr Anderson, but Mr Truss has an opportunity to do better. He needs to do better because, as noted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute:

A terrorist attack on Australia’s maritime interests is a credible scenario. We have high dependence on shipping and seaborne trade, and are adjacent to a region where terrorist groups have maritime capabilities.

In light of this, it is a shame that an attack on cabotage was among Mr Truss’s first comments on the transport portfolio. It was not a good start by Mr Truss and, unfortunately, his performance has not improved.

I conclude by starting the debate for this year by moving a second reading amendment standing in my name. I urge the Senate to give it support. I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

“but the Senate condemns the Government for:

             (a)    failing to uphold Australia’s national interest by adopting anti-Australian shipping policies that favour foreign vessels and crew despite the risk to national security, Australian jobs and the natural environment;

             (b)    failing to ensure adequate security in relation to the shipping of dangerous goods and hazardous material, including explosives precursors such as ammonium nitrate; and

             (c)    failing to ensure ships comply with the requirement to provide details of crew and cargo 48 hours before arrival”.