Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to echo the fine remarks from the members for Newcastle, Shortland, Fremantle and Grayndler. This really is a substantive issue for our nation. Plenty of people have been talking about how we are an island nation and we need to pay due deference to the need of an island nation to have a strong maritime industry, including in ship construction. We are having that debate right now with the government's disgraceful breach of its promise to build submarines in this country. We are seeing the impact of that running down capability right now in my home region of the Hunter. The excellent member for Newcastle talked about that at Tomago with Forgacs. It has gone from 900 highly skilled workers to between 150 and 200. That is a great loss of capacity in this nation. We are also seeing this in ship design and development and in transport in our maritime industry as a whole.

As the member for Grayndler, who was a most excellent minister for transport, discussed earlier, there is a great opportunity to have Australian-run shipping lines transporting around this nation. He was an excellent minister for transport, building on another excellent minister for transport, our very own Peter Morris, the former member for Shortland, who did so much for Australian shipping and through the 'ships of shame' inquiry in earlier times.

It is really concerning when we hear those on the other side conflate separate issues. They conflate cartage costs that have gone up due to quite outrageous monopoly rents being extracted by the Port of Melbourne with these very important reforms. These reforms ask, 'If it is okay to have Australians driving the trucks that transport the ingots of aluminium from Bell Bay to the docks, why isn't it okay to have Australian workers on the ships that transport those ingots of aluminium?' That is a really fundamentally important principle.

People accuse us of using a glib phrase with 'Work Choices on water', but it gets to the heart of the matter here. Those on the other side do not really concern themselves about the exploitation of workers. They say some important things, but they need to match that rhetoric with actions. On this issue, on the bill and on everything else around this debate, they have failed. They will continue to fail.

The member for Lyons confesses an interest in workers. He is absolutely right: we need to be very cognisant of the interests of the workers in his home state versus the interests of the workers on the water. But attacking one worker's rights to promote the economic interests of another worker is in no-one's interests. That is a race to the bottom. If you accept that it is okay to undercut Australian workers on ships and for them to have Third World rates of pay and conditions, the next argument is to have them in those workplaces at Bell Bay, at Norske Skog and at these really important manufacturing facilities. It is a fundamental point of human rights that all human rights are inviolate. If you run down some people's human rights to support others, it is a race to the bottom and it will end in tears.

It is really important that we are having this debate right now because Four Corners tonight on ABC will be investigating some very disturbing actions that occurred aboard a ship that docked in my home port, the Port of Newcastle, which is also the home port of the members for Newcastle and Shortland. We were all very disturbed by what occurred upon that ship.

Ultimately the workers on that ship were relying on the intervention of the MUA, a union that has a great internationalist tradition and a great internationalist orientation to support workers around the world. It knows that the best way of supporting these workers is to ensure fair working conditions on Australian ships. That is why I am proud to say that I am a great supporter of the MUA, and the MUA has been supportive of me in the past. It is a great union that really is part of the social fabric of this country.

The agenda of those on the other side is really to destroy the MUA, just as in 1998 Peter Reith and John Howard conspired to make an entire workforce redundant purely because they were members of a union, in order to destroy a union. Those opposite know that if they attack the MUA and the CFMEU mining division, two great, stalwart unions in our region, they can destroy organised labour in this country and really run down the capacity of progressive forces to run an opposition to their reactionary cause.

So this is a really important issue, and the choice is clear. The choice is between supporting wages and conditions of Australian workers and running them down in response to Third World conditions. So I am proud to support the member for Newcastle's motion, and I do that very proudly.

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