Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) Australia, as an island nation, has a national interest in fostering an Australian coastal shipping industry for economic, environmental and national security reasons;

(b) comparable major trading nations have strong regulatory systems in place to support their coastal shipping industries;

(c) in 2012 the former government put in place a broad package of taxation, regulatory and workplace reform to revitalize Australian shipping; and

(d) people who perform work in Australia should be paid according to Australian-standard wages and conditions; and

(2) calls on the Government to act to support and promote the Australian coastal shipping industry, and to actively support Labor's recent changes to give the industry the certainty it needs to invest in new Australian flagged shipping.

Australia has a strong national interest in fostering our own coastal shipping industry, and the shipping industry holds particular significance for my electorate of Newcastle. The port of Newcastle is the world's largest coal export port and one of Australia's largest ports by throughput tonnage. It has a 215-year history of commercial shipping and is the economic and trading centre for Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and much of northern and north-west New South Wales. The port of Newcastle plays a critical supply chain interface in the movement of some 40 different cargoes and manages more than 4,600 ship movements every year.

In addition to its role as a trading port, it has been a key water berth for our nation's shipbuilders for nearly a century, with Royal Australian Navy and commercial ships being built in the yards of Newcastle, Carrington and Tomago. From HMS Strahan and Condamine, built in support of our World War II defence in the 1940s, to the Huon class minehunters, built in their entirety in Newcastle in the 1990s, to today with more than a third of the three air warfare destroyers being built at Forgacs, Newcastle is home to a highly skilled shipbuilding industry. The port of Newcastle is no doubt one of my electorate's most important economic contributors, leading to the employment of thousands of Novocastrians. Regretfully, this highly profitable port was recently privatised by the New South Wales Liberal government, and Newcastle continues to battle with Sydney to secure our fair share of the spoils.

However, more broadly, to put the case for Australia's strategic national interests in a local shipping industry: we are the world's largest island nation with the world's longest coastlines, and 10 per cent of world trade moves to and from Australia by sea. Shipping is important in terms of our economy, our environment and our national security. For an industry to operate confidently and successfully, certainty is required. We have seen the damage to the renewable energy industry in Australia when uncertainty reared its ugly head because of the actions of the Abbott Liberal government. We have also seen, through this government's willingness to send our naval shipbuilding contracts offshore, our shipbuilding industry on the brink of collapse, with hundreds of jobs at Newcastle shipyards already gone. We cannot see the same thing happen to our coastal shipping industry. In 2012, Labor gave the shipping industry in Australia certainty. It is vital that the reforms we introduced are maintained. These were not autocratic reforms. They were laws drafted in response to extensive consultations with all the stakeholders. To move away from these reforms that have been in place for less than three years now will almost certainly work to destabilise the shipping industry. We have already seen signs of this through recent ship flagging decisions.

Since its election, the government has vowed to undo Labor's reforms and effectively walk away from shipping; just like it is walking away from our shipbuilding industry. This is madness. The coastal shipping laws put in place by Labor created a level playing field for Australian ships rather than allowing undercutting on costs, including wages. The Abbott government, on the other hand, wants to introduce 'Work Choices on Water'. This was outlined in Budget Paper No. 2 last month, which stated a desire for:

Since many shipping companies base their ships in Third World nations to minimise their pay levels and working conditions, this was an explicit statement that the government wants to impose massive reductions in pay and conditions. This of course is not a new phenomenon, but it is no less damaging now than in the past. The former Minister for Transport and fellow Novocastrian, Peter Morris, outlined some of the dangers associated with ships operating under flags of convenience in his well-known and highly regarded Ships of Shame report in 1992. Tonight, ABC's Four Corners will outline some of the current-day dangers with their expose into the events on board the MV Sage Sagittariusthat saw three lives lost in 2002.

Rather than engage in a race to the bottom, as this government proposes, we should focus on the actions of comparable major trading partners like the US, Japan, the UK and Europe as a whole—all free market economies with clear, strong frameworks for the shipping industry to operate within. Current laws introduced by Labor help strike an important balance between competition and the national interest. The government's proposal, on the other hand, will decimate the shipping industry and have long-term, negative safety, economic, environmental and national security implications for Australia.

See this speech in context