Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish I could say it is a great pleasure to speak on this bill, the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, but it is one of the more egregious bits of legislation that the Abbott-Turnbull-whatever-comes-next government has brought into this parliament. It just goes to show you that nothing has changed. This is one bill along a continuum of bad legislation under different prime ministers and, of course, a whole range of different faces on the frontbench.

But one thing has stayed the same: the recklessness in the policy making that we are seeing from this government basically around one ideology. The member for Bendigo hit the nail on the head when she said that this is Work Choices on water. As she finished she said this is all about getting the unions. They are so intent on getting the unions and so intent on getting unionised Australian workers—in this case, seafarers. They are so intent on doing that. Let's make no mistake, 88 per cent of the regulatory savings presented in this bill, 88 per cent of the regulatory savings supposedly reaped by the community, are actually the wages and conditions of Australian seafarers.

I wish I could say that this is something that is old, something that has been around forever and that Australian conservatism has always been this myopic, but it has not. I remember vividly the Ships of shame report from 1992 because it was one of the first parliamentary reports that I ever read. I must have been a very keen and avid young Labor participant. I read this report and I moved a number of motions in Young Labor because I was so amazed at the state of seafaring around the world. It was such a mess. Flag-of-convenience workforces were treated terribly. Environmental standards were completely ignored and only existed on paper. Insurance standards only existed on paper.

The maintenance of rust bucket ships that were left to sail the oceans of the world, including Australians sea lanes, was documented in the Ships of shame report, a report by this parliament. It was done by a bipartisan committee and it was a bipartisan report. John Anderson was on this committee, so by no means was it a Labor report. There was no dissenting report in it. It was a report of this parliament that was presented to this parliament unanimously. The way it introduces itself in chapter 1 should be of interest to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because, of course, you are a Western Australian. Point 1.1 of this report says:

On 21 July 1991 the bow section fell off the Greek registered oil tanker Kirki while enroute from the Arabian Gulf to Kwinana in Western Australia.

It fell off. The bow of the ship fell off into the ocean off the coast of Western Australia. It was an oil tanker, and there was oil spewing out of the front of a bowless ship. There was a massive hole in the front of it. It was not as big as one might conjure up in one's imagination, but it was a big hole. There were high seas, and it was laden with 82,660 tonnes of light crude oil and was 55 miles of the Western Australian coast.

The ship did not sink and its crew was rescued. Were it not for the bravery of the Australian recovery crew who went on and secured that ship then this report would have something very different in it. It would be talking about an environmental disaster that would have been etched in Western Australian memories and etched in Australian memories, because the bow of the ship would have fallen off, the ship would have listed uncontrollably and it would have broken up, and 82,000 tonnes of light crude oil would have been off the Western Australian coast. That is the consequence of having unseaworthy ships registered under flags-of-convenience with poorly trained, poorly paid and often abused crews. That is the consequence of that system. You play the lottery if you allow flags-of-convenience to just roam around your sea lanes without appropriate measures to prevent disasters like this.

The Ships of shame report at point 1.2 states:

This ship should have been structurally sound. It was in class with a reputable classification society and had been regularly inspected. Yet it suffered a major structural failure due to corrosion which had gone undetected by the classification society, the ships managers, charterer and the crew. Consequently, the lives of the crew were put at risk and the coast of Western Australia and the marine environment faced a major pollution threat which was only narrowly averted.

Point 1.3 goes on to the competence of the crew et cetera. So we have these very good parliamentary reports—the Ships of shame report and its subsequent report Ships of shame: a sequel, another bipartisan report done by the same committee. It should echo in the mind of the Leader of the House, if he were here or was listening, because he was on that committee with that follow-up report.

Yet, what do we have this government bringing in today? We have them bringing in a bill that implements Work Choices on water and sacrifices Australian sovereignty, Australian sea lanes, to these rust buckets, to the international standard of the flag-of-convenience. We have these Liberal members from Tasmania who have the memory span of a goldfish. They would not know about the Ships of shame report. They would not know what the Kirki was. They do not remember the more recent maritime issues that we have had off Newcastle and the Great Barrier Reef and, frankly, they do not care. All they care about is this moment. You wonder what goes through their heads. You hear some of their rhetoric and you think to yourself: 'They're not really thinking about the national interest. They haven't done much research or looked into this issue.'

It is a very, very important issue because it goes to the heart of our national sovereignty, so much so that the home of the free market, the United States, has the Jones Act, which protects US coastal waters and the ports within them from flags-of-convenience, from foreign competition. Indeed, for any island nation, you would think that it is kind of important to have some national capacity to move your own goods around your own ports. Indeed, it is important to have some national capacity, some Australian flagged ships, in times of national emergency. It is kind of important, you would have thought. Most Australians, if they were listening to this, would think: 'That's a sensible proposition. Protect the environment from rust bucket flags-of-convenience ships, these ships of shame. Protect the national interest, the national sovereignty, by guarding our own sea lanes,' which is no different to any other section of the Australian nation. As the member for Grayndler pointed out, the equivalent is to say that you should allow trucks from any other nation to go down our highways. Why have a licensing system? Why have Australian registration? Why not just adopt the standards of the rest of the world? It will be cheaper. And that is what this is supposedly all about—that it is cheaper, that there is some sort of efficiency to being unsafe, to not guarding your national interest.

It is an extraordinarily short-sighted proposition from this government—the Abbott-Turnbull or is it the Turnbull-Abbott government? Mr Abbott has been sitting up there all week like a Cheshire cat. The corridor just down from my office is sort of the 'corridor of tragic souls', the cast-offs or the lazy Susan, or something like that, I think, it was at the time, that the now Prime Minister made. This is extraordinarily short-sighted legislation that has come into the parliament. Nothing has really changed for this government. They are so determined to get at the unions and to get at some poor Australian sailors. I have a few in my electorate and they are good Australians. They care about the country. They work hard. They are away from home a lot.

Of all people, politicians should understand the consequences of being away from home. You might do it, but the rates of pay for Australian seafarers are reasonable and they have to be to attract Australian workers. But if you just throw it open to the rest of the world, to the rest of the world's standards, you will soon find things dropping—environmental standards, safety standards, national security standards. You cannot tell me that a ship that is unsafe, unseaworthy, with a crew that is underpaid, treated appallingly and sourced from god knows where with god knows whose standards is not going to be a national security question when it docks at ports. We know that is the major way illicit goods come into this country. We know they come through the docks, in one form or another. They come from overseas, in one form or another. Yet this government, which prides itself on national security, tells us they are out there protecting us all.

We have just heard the member for Canning's first speech. It is a good day for him. He talked about making sure that the police and the ADF have all the tools at hand to protect this country. Yet on either side of his maiden speech is this bill that completely deregulates Australian shipping to the standards of the rest of the world. We know the consequences of that for our national security. We know the consequences of that for our environment. We know the consequences of that for Australian workers and wages. It is an appalling proposition.

There are reports that are within living memory; they are not lost to the parliament. It is interesting to read these reports. Recommendation 11 of the Ships of shamereport is:

The Federal Government deny entry to ships which do not meet ILO 147 standards in relation to crew employment conditions from trading in Australian waters.

The tenor of this report and its later recommendations is about lifting the rest of the world to our standards, not degenerating to theirs, not falling to the lowest common denominator. It was a bipartisan report of this parliament and was taken seriously.

My friend and a person I greatly respect, Paul Neville, later served on that committee and did a very good job for this country. I have served on that committee. So you wonder what is going through this government's head—if anything is going through its head. All they seem to care about is chaos and division and who gets to be a minister. I am very glad for Minister Ciobo, at the table. He was lifted to greatness after all that time being a parliamentary secretary. I always felt sorry for him, because he picked poorly in the past. I know what that is like. I digress.

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