Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me no pleasure at all to speak on the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill, but I do support the second reading amendment moved by the member for Grayndler. As people know, I am a member from Tasmania, the island state of this great island nation of ours. Tasmania is reliant, perhaps more than most other parts of Australia, on shipping. As our economy grows and our exports increase, shipping becomes more important to our island's prosperity.

This bill is important for Tasmania and it is important for workers, including Tasmanian workers. Around 10,000 Australians are directly and indirectly employed in the shipping industry today. That is without any related jobs. This bill is important because the majority of the savings that have been identified by the government in this bill—in fact, 88 per cent of them—relate to reducing Australian workers' wages and to replacing those workers with a 90 per cent foreign crew. That is the detail in this bill. It specifically says that savings to businesses will amount to $21.4 million a year and that $19 million, or 88 per cent, of those so-called savings come from the change in wages. That is out of the $85 billion production value of this industry. A very significant saving comes from the change in wages.

Regrettably, the government has not modelled the full cost of the impact of this amendment bill. Specifically, its official modelling does not account for the cost of the lost Australian jobs. It does not account for the lost local spending and for the taxes that those workers would have paid. It does not account for the higher welfare spending that could result from workers being laid off due to this legislation. We know this will happen because of the evidence put before the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee's inquiry into the bill.

In sworn evidence, Mr Milby of North Star Cruises said that the government's plans to allow foreign flagged vessels paying Third World wages to undercut Australian vessels on Australian coasts would damage his business. He said he had discussions with officials from the department of infrastructure, who told him that the best way to remain competitive under the changes was to register his vessel overseas, sack his Australian crew and hire foreign workers on lower wages. That is the advice that Mr Milby claims he was given by the government. It shows that what we are saying about the changes in this bill is correct. It shows clearly that the savings are coming from changes in wages.

Specifically, part 4 of the act which this bill amends, which creates the existing system of preference for Australian ships, is being repealed and replaced with a section that says that foreign flagged ships will not be required to pay Australian-level wages until they have spent more than half the year—that is, 183 days—in Australian waters. These new arrangements do not subject non-Australian ships to Australian workplace standards. They do include a requirement that overseas vessels employ Australian citizens, residents or holders of a working visa in two senior roles only: as either master or chief mate or as either chief engineer or first engineer. But, again, that is only after 183 days working around our coast in Australian waters.

Labor's position on this bill has been clear: workers in Australia, moving freight in Australia, should be paid Australian wages and operate under Australian workplace health and safety rules. It should not matter how freight is moved, whether by rail, by trucks on roads, or by sea: the workers moving that freight should be paid Australian wages and come under the same conditions. That is what should happen. Everyone who works in Australia should be paid in accordance with Australian conditions and legal requirements.

I want to go specifically to the contributions made in this place and in newspapers in Tasmania by the Liberal members for Bass, Braddon and Lyons, who are supporting these changes. They are supporting a reduction in the wages of the workers on Australian vessels. They clearly do support this legislation and that reduction in wages, despite the member for Braddon understanding the situation in his own electorate, where crew from the Alexander Spirit have been campaigning and talking to the local community about having been asked to take an Australian vessel overseas and to then hand it over, essentially, and not have a job to come back to. The members for Bass, Braddon and Lyons continually assert that Labor's 2012 shipping reforms did not work. But let us be clear: they were never given time to work.

This government has done everything it could since it gained office to undermine our reforms. To go to the history, when Labor came to office in late 2007, the Australian shipping industry was already in a state of decline. Under the former Howard government, the number of Australian flagged vessels working domestic trade routes plunged from 55 in 1996 to just 21 in 2007. Labor's laws were designed to re-vitalise the Australian shipping industry. But they have been undermined. Our reforms were undertaken after extensive consultation with stakeholders and following unanimous recommendations of a 2008 parliamentary inquiry. All sides of politics agreed the reforms were necessary. These reforms, which Labor then implemented, have been undermined.

The aim of the reforms was to support the ability of the Australian shipping industry to compete within its own borders. The package included taxation incentives for flagging ships Australian and to encourage employment of Australian seafarers, a new 'second register', with tax benefits to ships engaged predominantly in international trade, coastal shipping reform and a workplace package focusing on maritime skills development. Maritime skills development is something we need in this country. It continued to allow participation of foreign ships where an Australian ship was not available. So we had given that consideration. But, since day one, the coalition government has been promising to repeal Labor's changes, undermining their effect and deterring investment in Australian flagged shipping. The uncertainty created by this government has had the effect of a continuing decline of the Australian fleet.

I want to talk about SeaRoad Holdings, a shipping company in Tasmania, who also went on the record to say that they had decided to invest $100 million in the first of two new cargo vessels—the first of which was due to begin operating on Bass Strait next year. In a submission to the Senate committee examining the legislation, SeaRoad's Michael Easy warned that the legislation would imperil this investment. He wrote that, when seeking bank finance for its expansion, the company cited the strong support for an investment in Australian shipping that was there in the existing legislation. Mr Easy wrote:

It is crucial to our funding arrangements, Tasmania's future and Australia's credibility on the world stage that the legislation acknowledges that the current regime be preserved on Bass Strait.

He is clearly saying that the current system and regime need to be maintained for his substantial investment. That is critically important to Tasmania and our access; it is critically important.

The Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill replaces preference for an Australian flagship on ships working the Australian coast with indifference to their flagging. It will place so-called flags of convenience ships on the same level as an Australian flag. Currently, without these changes, when a ship has an Australian flag, it is subject to Australian standards of safety, environmental compliance, taxation and industrial relations both here and on the open sea, and it employs Australians.

It is in Australia's interests to ensure that we have a local, viable shipping sector. Our interests are really threefold. Firstly, they are economic interests because 99 per cent of our trade comes from shipping, including, of course, our petroleum supply, which is important for Australia. Secondly, they are environmental interests. We have heard from others about our high environmental standards and those incidents that underscore the risk to our natural assets. Of course, those incidents on the Barrier Reef are particularly concerning, with the Shen Neng in 2010. Those crews were not familiar with Australian waters. They were not familiar with Australia's environmental protections. Of course, with their conditions, some of the crews would have been subject to fatigue. They would not have had Australian conditions. They would not have had the same safety standards on board those vessels. So we do know that environment is of particular interest. Thirdly, there is our national security interest. We have heard and we understand that the Office of Transport Security acknowledges that the screening of foreign crews is harder than the screening of Australian crews. We also know that the government has not modelled the costs of this higher profile of risk-screening that will be required for those crews. That is also not to mention the maritime skills development, which I talked about earlier, and the benefits that our defence forces gain from the skills and support from the existence of a vibrant shipping sector and the people who work in it.

Indeed, comparable nations around the world, such as the US and Canada, and many countries in the EU, all strongly regulate their own coastal shipping for national interest reasons on the three interests which I talked about. Other countries understand how important it is to their long-term viability, to their security, to their environmental systems and to their economies that they have a vibrant shipping industry—but it appears that the current government does not.

The members for Bass, Braddon and Lyons also appear to be supporting the false belief that this legislation will lower shipping costs for Tasmanian firms such as Bell Bay Aluminium and Norske Skog. I want to make it clear that the member for Grayndler, me and Tasmanian Labor senators have all met with these firms, which the members say are struggling with these increased shipping costs. I want people to understand that there is no clear evidence that the increase in shipping costs that these companies are clearly experiencing is related to labour shipping reforms. Indeed, even if it were true that they were solely related to labour shipping reforms, there is no way that the amount of additional wages could be related to the costs that they are talking about. There is no way that they match, so there is no way that labour shipping reforms could be responsible for the increased costs of shipping that those companies are talking about. I would have hoped that the members for Bass, Braddon and Lyons understood that the costs of shipping across Bass Strait are much more complex than that and that they understood how complicated the issues of Bass Strait shipping are. I really think it shows that either they do not understand it—and I would hope that they do—or they are blindly following their party against the best interests of Tasmania. That is my concern about those three members and the comments they have made.

It is for these reasons that I believe this bill should not be supported. I firmly believe it goes against Australia's economic, environmental and security interests as well as against the interests of Australian workers. It is a pleasure to support the member for Grayndler's amendment to this bill.

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