Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to commence my contribution to this debate by thanking you all for your cooperation in allowing the member for Blaxland to continue to speak although he was due to take the chair. That was greatly appreciated by those on this side. I know how hard it is at times to organise the speakers panel and the speakers. We really appreciated your cooperation, and I want that placed on the record.

The opposition welcomes the Maritime Legislation Amendment (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Bill 2006. It is legislation that will actually improve the situation in relation to protecting our waterways, protecting the sea and protecting the ocean from pollutants from ships—action on this issue that I think all of us here are very mindful and very supportive of. The bill will amend the Navigation Act 1912 and the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983, implementing two revised annexes to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, commonly known as the MARPOL convention.

Annex I looks at the prevention of pollution by oil and annex II looks at the prevention of pollution by noxious liquid substances. The International Maritime Organisation adopted the revised annexes in October 2004. Like most international agreements, this will have had a long lead time before it comes into force, and in this case it is due to come into force on 1 January. As part of Australia’s international obligation as a member of the IMO, it is necessary for this bill to pass through the House.

I always take great interest in legislation that looks at shipping and at preventing the pollution of our oceans. The Shortland electorate is a coastal electorate, so it is very vulnerable to pollution caused by shipping. I think that when we look at this piece of legislation it is important to highlight the fact that if we do not protect our waterways there is the potential to have some serious problems.

There have been many examples of our environment being damaged at times. Environments throughout the world have been damaged by pollution. In the past few years there have been many collisions. In the seven years preceding 2003, there were 35 collisions and groundings of more than 50 large commercial ships in the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait waters. Since 1995 there was the Corolla which is a German ship—a Danish ship, a Panamanian ship, an Egyptian ship, an Indian ship, a Singaporean ship and a Malaysian ship. The Corolla had been responsible for pollution.

This bill has two annexures. Annex I looks at regulation for the prevention of pollution by oil and incorporates amendments adopted since the 1983 MARPOL agreement. It includes regulation on the phasing in of double hulls for oil tankers. In addition, separate chapters have been created for the construction and equipment provisions taken out of the operational requirements and the distinction is made clear between the requirements for new ships and for existing ships.

I believe that the phasing out and the phasing in of double-hull requirements for oil tankers is very important from the point of view of ensuring the safety of our coastline from pollution because it makes it much less vulnerable and particularly because we have many foreign owned and foreign flagged ships circumnavigating the coastline of Australia. These issues were identified in the Ships of shame report, which has already been mentioned in this debate, and also mentioned in the report of ICONS and then more recently in the Independent Review of Australian Shipping, IRAS, where they have been looked at once again.

The simple fact has been found that we have so many foreign owned ships that are flagged in one country, but often the captains of those ships come from another country and the crews of those ships come from yet another country. I have often used in this parliament the example of one of the ships that I visited, Angel III. It was a Maltese flagged ship, it had a Greek captain and it had a Burmese crew. This ship had a continuing voyage permit and it was constantly circumnavigating the coastline of Australia.

This legislation, which will come into effect after it passes through this parliament, should at least give us some certainty or put us in a bit better position when it comes to ensuring the safety of the ships. I am still very concerned about the fact that we are going to have ships of very dubious character with SVPs and CVPs circumnavigating Australia, but at least when we look to the future we can hope that the double-hull requirement for oil tankers will improve the situation, at least in that area.

I do note that there is a very clear distinction in the legislation between existing ships and new ships. So existing ships, such as the Angel III, will continue to circumnavigate Australia, traverse our waters, put Australian waters in danger of pollution and create situations where our Great Barrier Reef, one of our greatest tourist icons, is constantly put under threat. That ship can continue to do so, but the simple fact that we are signing up to this convention, which member states of the IMO are required to do, I think will improve the situation.

The new requirements in annex I include oil tankers constructed on and after 1 January 2007, but I do really worry how much longer those rusty hulks will travel around our coastline. This is the future. I think the government needs to think very seriously about the past and about delivering some safety to the Australian shorelines. It can do this by recognising the importance of the Australian shipping industry to Australia. Australia has been noted for its maritime expertise internationally. Australians working in the maritime industry are highly respected for their knowledge and their professionalism. Unfortunately, the Howard government has undermined the shipping industry, which provides jobs for Australian workers in an Australian industry.

Countries like the UK appreciate the importance of a strong shipping industry. It is important from the point of view of onshore and offshore activities, and considerable effort has been put into rebuilding the industry because of the benefit it provides to nations. The UK, the European Union and, for that matter, the USA have all recognised the importance of the shipping industry to their nations.

I hope that the parliamentary secretary who now has responsibility for shipping will really embrace all the issues and make a commitment to seeing that our shipping industry motors along as it is doing at the moment. She can be the person who is responsible for a growth in our shipping industry and for giving a real commitment to an Australian shipping industry, a real commitment to jobs and a real commitment to the future. By doing that, I think she will place herself in the history books as a person who has really benefited her nation.

Annex II deals with regulations for the prevention of pollution by noxious liquid substances. The revised categories are categories X, Y and Z—and I am not going into those categories, because previous speakers have done so. Other substances which will be evaluated fall outside categories X, Y or Z because they are considered to present no harm to marine resources, human health, amenities or other legitimate uses of the sea when discharged into the sea from tank-cleaning or deballasting operations. The discharge of bilge or ballast water or other mixtures contained in these substances is not subject to any of the requirements of MARPOL annex II. I add the quick comment that we always have to be careful of what we discharge into the sea.

Technological improvements in the shipping industry, such as efficient stripping techniques, have made possible significantly lower discharge levels of certain products and therefore that has been incorporated into annex II. For ships constructed on or after January 2007, the maximum permitted residue in the tank and its associated piping left after discharge will be set out as a maximum of 75 litres for products in category X, Y and Z.

Along with the revisions of annex II, the marine pollution hazards of thousands of chemicals have been evaluated. This has resulted in the hazard profile, which indexes substances according to bioaccumulation. These are significant advances. Vegetable oils, which have previously been categorised as unrestricted, will be carried in chemical tankers. I think members of this House would appreciate the reason for that and the danger that vegetable oils—oils of all kind—create for our marine environment. The revised annex also includes provision for the administration to exempt ships certified to carry individually identified vegetable oils.

In conclusion, I would like to return to the comments I made just a moment ago about hoping that the parliamentary secretary can be a breath of fresh air for our Australian shipping industry and will make a real commitment to the growth and rebuilding of it. In that vein, I would like to support the request that the member for Batman made about the ILO convention on seafarers. When will it be ratified? As you know, I am particularly committed to health and safety issues, and the health of safety of seafarers, as with other workers, is paramount in my mind. I think that it is very important to get all parties together and see if we can work on this and bring it into effect as soon as possible.

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