Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the Leader of the National Party, who is present here now—and in particular their failure to put in place a very simple measure to connect this country to the international aviation system, a measure which lay on the table with no action at all for eight years under the Howard government while the leaders of the National Party, the ministers for transport, were busily going off on the Regional Partnerships program.

The Rudd government is going to be very different in the way in which it is going to run this country. It is going to be getting on with the unfinished business, of which there is an awful lot after 11 years of the Howard government. This is a perfect example of it. This is a very important bill. It is an example of how the Rudd government is not interested in governing through electoral cycles but is actually interested in governing for Australia’s long-term future and doing the things which need to be done.

This bill is also very important for my electorate of Corio, which has within it the airport at Avalon. Currently Avalon is a domestic airport that is used by Jetstar for low-cost flights. Flights go from Avalon to Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. It has been undergoing significant expansion over the last decade. This year in the order of 1.4 million passengers are expected to land at Avalon. I have raised this in the context of this debate because a number of us, and Avalon itself, are very hopeful that it may at some point in the future be able to expand its activities internationally so that it would become an international airport. Of course, in that sense this bill will then become very relevant to people who travel to and leave from Avalon.

Right now more than 1,000 people are employed in the various businesses and works that go on at Avalon Airport, but it really can expand much more beyond that. Avalon represents the best prospect that our region has of significant job growth over the coming years. For Avalon to go international would be a real catalyst, a breakthrough, if you like. The future is very exciting for Avalon. The possibility of it one day becoming an international airport is something that all public policymakers in this country need to keep at the forefront.

This bill makes amendments to allow, as I said, for the accession of this country to the Montreal convention. It affects the three acts which I have previously referred to. The new Montreal convention is a holistic approach to passenger requirements. It includes a complete framework for liability for air carriers in relation to loss or damage to cargo and baggage, in relation to damage caused by a delay in the scheduled arrival of a passenger, baggage or freight, and in relation to injury or death of passengers. It also allows for cases in relation to damage to be heard in Australia rather than having to prosecute or pursue those cases in foreign courts. Significantly, it also updates the records management—and this is particularly important for freight management—by allowing the use of electronic records and, in that way, overcoming the cumbersome paper-based waybill system which is currently in use.

The bill goes a long way towards modernising language within our own laws in relation to the definition of ‘family member’ to include stepsiblings and foster children, for example. It updates the currency which was in the Warsaw convention, which, as I stated earlier, is no longer in use anywhere else, and defines a currency in terms of the special drawing rights, which represents a basket of modern currencies. It puts in place a two-tier system of liability whereby applicants can claim up to 100,000 special drawing rights, which is roughly the equivalent of A$170,000, on a no-fault basis. Where there are damages which exceed that amount, they can be pursued unless the air carrier ‘proves that the damage was not caused by the negligence or wrongful act or omission of the carrier, its servants or agents’. The bill does not affect any domestic carriage arrangements. They remain governed by the Civil Aviation (Carriers’ Liability) Act, which I described earlier.

This bill is long overdue in being put in place in this country. The assent by Australia to the Montreal convention is long overdue. In a way, it is a very simple piece of legislation and it is a very simple thing to do. It is an obvious piece of unfinished business and an obvious thing for a government to do to connect this country to the modern aviation system. The fact that it stood on our books for eight years while the Howard government did absolutely nothing stands as a legacy of the extent to which the Howard government was asleep at the wheel and the extent to which the National Party in particular, and former Nationals leaders and former ministers for transport who were Nationals leaders, were completely distracted by electoral politics, by the Regional Partnerships program and by a range of other matters. They did not do the simplest thing around to connect this country to a modern aviation system. It stands as a condemnation of all of them for what they have done over the last eight years.

The Rudd government is a very different government. It is getting on with the unfinished business that is in place after 11 long years of the Howard government. It is going to fix up the problems—simple problems, in a sense—which have been in place over that period. It is a demonstration that we are going through all the statutes at the moment and working out where the Howard government did absolutely nothing, leaving holes all over the place as they were asleep at the wheel. We will fix up those problems and make a commitment to governing this country not for the next three years of an electoral cycle but for the long-term future.

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