Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Grey for his continuing interest in the maritime industry. As the member for an electorate that produces a lot of exports, he wants a very efficient maritime sector and, particularly, efficient Australian ports. I am pleased today to report to the House on the conclusion of a major chapter in Australia’s waterfront reform. You will all be aware that, in the time of this government, we have transformed Australia’s waterfront from one of international embarrassment to one where many of our ports are at or up with world’s best practice.

We can all remember on this side those days when Labor ministers stood at this box and told us that it was completely impossible to move more than 14 containers an hour—it simply was not possible to move more than 14 containers in an hour. Now we regularly achieve double that figure. Indeed, our export and import performance has been greatly enhanced.

A levy was introduced in 1998 to help fund the waterfront reform agenda, in particular to fund redundancies that were occurring as part of the waterfront reform. There has been $247 million collected through that levy and it has funded, amongst other things, redundancy packages for 1,487 employees.

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