Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 is a bill that, by design, will destroy the Australian shipping industry. This is an industry that has been on its knees for some time. It was not saved by legislation from the previous government, but it will be dealt a death blow if this legislation passes; and the reason for that is that the bill, almost in terms, is designed to remove every piece of protection that exists for the Australian shipping industry. You do not need to look much further than the analysis from the government that supports this bill that says, 'Expect 1,000 jobs to go.' I am not aware of any other time in this parliament, in recent memory, where a government has come up and said, 'Here's a bill that'll cost you a thousand jobs; please pass it.' That is what this government is seeking that we do.

You only have to take a little bit of a step back and look at the history to understand the dire situation that the Australian shipping industry finds itself in. As the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers have been pointing out, we have lost four Australian crewed ships in recent months, and that follows another four that were lost after the legislation was passed back in 2012. So we now have five ships operating under a transitional general licence, and that is due to sunset in 2017. At least that gives some measure of protection for Australian crews, but what about the situation of Australian flagged ships? Well, we have lost another couple of those since the legislation was passed under the previous government, and so we are left in a situation now where most of the ships operating in Australian waters are operating on temporary licences, and if this bill passes then what is left of Australian flagged ships is likely to go as well. What we will almost certainly end up with, if this bill passes, is an Australian shipping industry that is constituted by a few vessels operating in the Bass Strait. All of this is in an island country—a country that is girt by sea. We will be one of the few island nations that has no shipping industry to speak of. The ships that will run from port to port around the Australian coast will not be Australian flagged or Australian crewed.

There will be expanded opportunities now for what were meant to be temporary visas for foreign seafarers who might come into Australian waters and then go out. That situation is now going to be made permanent. In effect, anyone operating around Australia will be able to use an existing but now newly available category of visa to ensure that the workers on that ship do not have to comply with Australian industrial law.

What is happening here is that not only are we about to see the end of Australian flagged ships operating around our island continent, but also we are about to see the whole of Australian waters carved out from the operation of Australian labour law. This follows previous attempts from this government to do this, some more successful than others, including for people who are working in connection with offshore resource projects. Most people would think that, if a resource project is operating in Australian waters—for example, building a new floating gas platform—and if ships were working in connection with it, the people working on those ships might be governed by Australian labour law. Well, no. This government has gone to great lengths—and we have stopped them a couple of times in the Senate, but they are still intent on flouting the will of this parliament—to say: 'We are quite happy to just carve out whole areas where labour law does not apply.' They have done that with offshore resource projects, and now, with this bill, they are doing it for all the waters around Australia.

We are going to lose not only a shipping industry but a skills base because there will no longer be an incentive for anyone to run Australian crews in ships around our country. So the training for those crews, which currently takes place in various places around Australia, will go as well—that is, the training colleges and the infrastructure that supports them. Can you imagine saying, 'We will allow trucks to go up and down the Hume Highway that do not have to be registered in Australia, the operators do not have to have an Australian licence and the normal rules do not apply to them.' That would be an absurd situation. No-one in this country would tolerate us deregulating the Hume Highway, but that is what this government is doing for our shipping lanes, for our shipping highways around this country. They are saying, 'You do not have to have Australian registration and you do not have to comply with Australian conditions.' This is deregulation and neoliberalism gone mad. This is the Australian government saying, 'We are quite happy to remove any protection, industrial or safety or environmental, that could potentially stand in the way of companies making huge profits. We will remove that from the area surrounding our country.' It is neoliberalism gone mad because it will result in the loss of jobs and it will not result in any net benefit to Australia; it is only going to assist large corporations that can already afford to pay for Australian crews. It will assist them to cut their wages bill by being able to employ workers from overseas in what is, by definition, a mobile industry, where it is possible to go to another port, pick people up and bring them here.

The reason that I say it is neoliberalism gone mad is that not only is it not going to benefit Australia but our trading partners are not doing this. This is not the direction that other countries are going. Other countries that have substantial coastlines are doing the opposite. The government would know that, in the US free trade agreement that exists with the US and has been in place for some time, the US specifically reserves the right to regulate its own coast and do what other governments are doing, like Indonesia, and that is say, 'This is an economic opportunity for us. If we regulate what happens around our coastline, we can create jobs for people.' I reiterate that you would think that most people in Australia would think that, if you are taking something from one port to another in Australia, it would probably be done by an Australian crew and perhaps an Australian ship. There is not only the opportunity to regulate it and provide jobs locally but we could raise revenue as well. That is what other countries do. They say, 'If you operate in our waters and you move things from port to port, then we will charge you for that and we will raise revenue from it.' Other countries have successfully combined a successful shipping industry with a revenue stream. So the government is not only about to smash jobs and smash an industry; it is about to do itself out of money at a time when the Treasurer tells us repeatedly that the budget is under pressure.

What we do know is that it will not only hurt jobs and hurt potential revenue streams but it will make the area around this country less safe. The government tells us, 'No. It's okay. We will make sure nothing happens,' but, if you look at the number of shipping occurrences reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in 2005 to 2012, you can see that 611 vessels registered in other countries were reported, which is almost triple that of reports for Australian vessels. So we lose the ability to regulate in the way that we would like for economic benefit but also for environmental benefit and safety benefit, because we know what the consequences are when something goes wrong. We are dealing with potential oil spills. We are dealing with potential damage to areas like our reefs. We are dealing with potential damage to some of the most important parts of our environment that Australians love and want to have protected. Why risk our fisheries, why risk our coastal environment and why risk our Great Barrier Reef simply so that companies that are already making a lot of money can make a bit more?

Crucially, we are in many ways about to give up our sovereignty over what happens in the waters around us. We will perhaps become the first island nation to no longer have the capacity for a merchant navy in the way we used to, and we could also become the first island nation that says, 'We don't mind if this area around our country is serviced by people who are not from this country and return no economic benefit to this country.' That is an astounding proposition from a government that is confronting high unemployment rates and especially high youth unemployment rates when it should be searching for new ways of ensuring that people in Australia get some benefit from the natural resources available to us. That should include moving from port to port around this country, following the lead of places like the UK and at least being in line with what the likes of the US are doing, looking more closely at places like Indonesia and saying, 'There is an opportunity for us. There is an opportunity to not only save jobs but save the shipping industry and raise money as well.'

The fact that this government comes before this place with a bill that it shamefacedly says is going to cost 1,000 jobs is reason enough to oppose it, but I urge this House and also the other place to send the government back to the drawing board and say, 'We have massive opportunities, economic opportunities, if we want to protect our shipping industry and nurture it. We only have to look at other countries.' That is the direction we should be taking instead of this, which will smash the Australian shipping industry.

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