Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support all of the speakers who so far have dealt with the Maritime Legislation Amendment (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Bill 2006. I note at the outset, in the brief time that I have, that I went to consult the Parliamentary Library’s Bills Digestalways the best source of objective information about this—and I found that the only Digest I could have a look at was for the previous bill, of 2003, because the library is under a great deal of stress from the demands put on it to produce material for us to use related to this.

However, that Digest, the work of Angus Martyn, goes to the core of why we are dealing with this particular bill now, what generated it. And what generated it was that there was recognition that the sea could no longer be a dumping ground, accidental or otherwise, for massive amounts of pollutants. That goes back to the 1960s when the Torrey Canyon oil tanker was grounded in the English Channel. There were 120,000 tonnes of crude oil poured into the sea, causing massive environmental damage.

It is a result of that particular damage—and we have seen plenty of other examples since then on a massive scale—that MARPOL, the International Maritime Organisation’s International Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Ships, was incorporated. It has six different annexures. In 2003 an annex that had not been ratified domestically, or indeed internationally, was put before the House in order to try to kick along Australia’s participation within that.

What is important about this is that it is an international activity. Tanker operations are international in their scope. Their impact is felt on every corner of this globe, and deleterious impacts can be felt right around the shores of this continent. Those come not only from the things we are dealing with today—chemical pollution or pollution from oil—but also from other things that members are aware of. There can be not just noxious substances but also noxious little beasts which enter our ecosystems, as they have done in Tasmania—the black-lipped mussel being one of those, I think. They can be easily carried in storage areas and, being carried in those storage areas, they are allowed to go out when the ships are being cleaned out and they cause massive environmental problems.

This bill is about international cooperation and putting a set of standards into place. The federal government is doing absolutely the right thing in saying that measures need to be taken with regard to two of the annexures of this agreement—that is, annexures I and II. Annex I seeks to put in place two forms of protection. One form of protection is absolutely fundamental, and that is double hulls. Why is that critical? We know from the Ships of shame report that having ships with a single hull and rusted hulks that were not looked after by the people who ran them led to a greatly increased possibility that if they were grounded or otherwise impacted upon there would be massive spillages of oil or other pollutants. That is the first measure that we are supporting here.

The second measure—as the member for Batman, the shadow minister, pointed out, it is probably something we should have got onto earlier—concerns pumproom bottom protection. On oil tankers of 5,000 tonnes dead weight and above constructed on or after 1 January 2007, the pumproom shall be provided with a double bottom. That is another area that has been identified as being fundamentally weak. Under this bill we will deal with tankers produced from now in one way—there will be a series of prescriptions in relation to them—and the ones produced previously will come under a different regime.

The second set of changes are also important. Annex II lists a range of noxious chemicals. Depending upon their nature and impact, they are dealt with in particular ways. There are categories X, Y and Z. There is an absolute prohibition on any of the X chemicals being discharged from ships because of the damage they could do to the marine environment or to humans. There is a sliding scale in terms of Y and Z in relation to the amount that can be discharged relatively safely and there is a catch-all beyond that. That catch-all goes beyond those noxious substances in the sliding scale to something as simple as vegetable oils. In the past, vegetable oils have been allowed to be ejected from ships. They have been allowed to be carried without any specific protection. The provision recognises that the sea should not be an accidental or deliberate dumping ground for our waste. Vegetable oils can have a dramatic impact on the environment and, therefore, they should be carried in the kinds of vessels that are appropriate for the purpose. So the containers should be the equivalent of the chemical containers that are used to run chemicals from one end of the planet to the other.

I congratulate the government on the technical measures contained in this bill and on being part of an international regime for standardisation of the carriage of these noxious substances. I also congratulate it on being part of an international attempt to not only get better standards and controls but also ensure that there is a greater understanding of the fact that the sea, despite its breadth, its depth and its capacity to absorb the damage we have done to it as a worldwide civilisation, is not just treated as a dumping ground, that it is protected from the products of our industrial civilisation and that it is allowed to be in as pristine a state as possible, and also a state where we can not only clear up the damage that has been done but prevent further damage in future. I thank the Deputy Speaker for his indulgence for staying in the chair so I could say a few brief words on this bill.

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