Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Now we learn that there's no review of our borders when it comes to MCVs; three ships are coming into our country and there is no review on the MCVs when people are throwing off drugs into sister ships and coming into our ports!

There has been no review of the MCV. Doesn't this just demonstrate the importance of making sure that they get off their backsides, start turning around and taking this seriously? If you throw your mind back, a lot of this was thrown up over a period of time under the guise of doing something for national security, and then under the guise of doing something for serious crimes. Now they're turning around and saying: 'Well, in actual fact, we're not worrying about the ones that are the worst. We're not worrying about the people actually committing the crimes on these foreign vessels, these foreign crews.'

It seems absolutely logical that the government should be doing a proper investigation, and it's important, in light of what we've been discussing with our amendments, that the MCV, which hasn't been reviewed, gets reviewed. The MCV, which has seen multiple players involved in drug importation, doesn't have the same requirements as ASICs and MSICs. And it's not because the ASIC or MSIC should be changed—in fact, we've already indicated the importance of ASICs and MSICs in the past; it's about how you turn around and make our borders safe. Making it safe isn't saying, 'We regularly review whether we should have a review.' It is actually about doing the reviewing. We've got an example of a huge importation of cocaine that slapped you in the face in March. An extremely good job was done by joint forces dealing with that particular incident, but the people were on MCVs. There weren't appropriate checks.

I want to turn to one other issue before I may well come back to the MCV question. At one point last year there were eight Rio Tinto ships off the coast of Queensland. Four were Australian vessels with Australian crew; the other four were flag-of-convenience vessels with foreign crew. Why are these crew not required to hold an MSIC?