Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is a shipping nation. We are surrounded by water, but we own few ships. This doesn't take into account what we're doing locally in our shipping, but what happens up north in the arctic and the North Sea, around a lot of important things. Coming from the Hunter, previously being employed at the port, we know how much this is.

The port of Newcastle brings in $4,800 shipping movements a year. Any one of those can go wrong, as we saw in 2007 with the Pasha Bulker parked up on Nobbys Beach. And what we could get in Australia is the leftover ships. Where we're working with bulk, we get things from moving up north—where we have the Triple Es of Maersk, where we have the Triple Es of 24,000 container ships, where we have the big ships. Australia doesn't have the content for that. So what we are doing here, in working out stuff up north, will eventually filter through to Australia. That's why it's important.

There's talk of this government reinstating a strategic fleet in Australia. I think I was at the press conference where that was launched, in the port of Newcastle, in the lead-up to the last election. What does this do? It protects the environment in case of a shipping accident; it puts a shipping structure in place to make sure we're not using bad chemicals on the bottom of our ships and antifouling. Why is that important? I'll give you an example in our harbour.

The port of Newcastle has a mean depth of channel at 15.2 metres. That's big, indeed. But a ship at high tide, leaving that, will draw 15.1 metres. So we're talking massive ships, with a draw of 10 centimetres difference between the bottom of the ship and the bottom of the channel. If something were to scrape something that was there, we could grab that. We could put that in our channel. That could be bad. If we had another ship like the Pasha Bulker, we could see bunker oil that's probably the dirtiest, filthiest fuel oil around—I think still used by the Russian navy. Some say they tracked the Moskva by its exhaust plumes. These things will all be outlawed under this process.

The use of better systems to protect our mean environment, the use of better systems to protect our harbour environment up in the northern states, and us ratifying this treaty, is so important for biodiversity protection against what can come in on our ships. This is all below the waterline but what is above the waterline is just as important, and we are seeking it for all those treaties. We saw recently, also in the Hunter, varroa mite expected to come in on a ship of some kind. The euthanasing of many hives across the Hunter is still going on. They have most of the registered hives now. Anything we can do to clean up shipping, to protect our environment, to protect our animals, is a good thing.

This bill and everything going through doesn't apply to shipping in Australia, as it stands, but it will one day. That is why it is a good thing to support and why I am proud to be speaking in support of it. While we're talking about the environment and sea levels, workers shouldn't be subject to these chemicals and the antifouling that can cause such bad things. We've seen what happens with PFAS on Australian land and around the world. This is a slight derivation of those chemicals, and we shouldn't have people, down slushy holes, working on that.

This is a step in our international maritime obligations that will benefit Australia in the long term, if not now. It is something that will protect our environment. If we lose a bunker oil ship in the arctic, what that will do to that region is terrible. Bunker oil doesn't get cleaned. We've seen penguins and seabirds getting cleaned every day. It is the most horrible thing. I can't imagine an engine running on that stuff. So that is a very good thing to do.

As the shadow minister said, we'll be supporting the bill and I look forward to other regulations that support our maritime industry in this place.