Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to see that the government has finally fixed this little error that it made in the last parliament. As people on this side have already pointed out, this particular piece of legislation, the Biosecurity Amendment (Ballast Water and Other Measures) Bill 2017, will be supported by Labor. We have said we were surprised it was not introduced in the 43rd Parliament. It is great that the government has caught up, realised its mistake and now brought this legislation to us.

Whilst we support the legislation that is before us, which talks about the safe management of ballast water, it allows me to talk more broadly about the importance of our shipping industry in this country. It allows me to highlight how we must have the world's best practices when it comes to shipping in this country. As you have already heard, and as others have pointed out, about two million tonnes of ships' ballast water is discharged into Australian ports by 13,000 ships visiting our ports from some 600 overseas ports. So this is something we want to get right.

We also know the risks with ballast water if it is not discharged properly. We know the risk to our biosecurity, which is the purpose of this bill being brought before the House. Marine organisms can be picked up and released when ballast water is discharged. We need to make sure, just like when you come in through customs, that we are not bringing in species that could cause a biosecurity risk in our maritime environment, whether they be bacteria, eggs or larvae of various species. We have a clean, green and safe image in this country and must do all we can to protect it—on shore, in the air and at sea.

There are a lot of ships that enter our waters and do business with Australia—13,000 ships from some 600 overseas ports. These laws and these particular rules would be so much easier to enforce if we knew that the people working on our ships were in fact Australian trained and qualified seafarers. There is a growing problem within our shipping industry in that there are very few Australians left to work in our shipping industry. Colleagues of mine have talked about 'Work Choices on water' and the fact that, by stealth, we are losing Australian jobs in our maritime industry time and time again as more and more ships are no longer Australian flagged ships; they are flags of convenience and flagged overseas.

Whilst this is very much an issue about Australian jobs, how does it relate to ballast water and the protection of our vital maritime industries? It is because we do not know if they have had the training. We do not know if they have the skills and qualifications required to ensure that they are meeting our tough laws on environmental safety when it comes to working on water. I have had the great opportunity to meet with many seafarers—people working on tugs in ports like Newcastle, people who used to work on fuel vessels and sea vessels and people still lucky enough to have a position in our shipping industry. They say that we should be concerned and that they know of people who have not had the opportunity of training in Australia—who do not have our MSIC, our maritime security identification card, and do not have Australian qualifications—who have a quite limited understanding of our rules. They tell me of cases where these people just dump their rubbish overboard into our Great Barrier Reef, due to their lack of knowledge, because they are not from Australia and are not Australian workers. In some cases they even struggle to have an Australian pilot because of the growth of 457 visas in this sector. So there are concerns about whether, when we do put rules in place, they will actually be enforced because of this issue that we have about who is working on our ships.

The legislation that is before us does bring us up to the Ballast Water Convention. We signed the Ballast Water Convention, subject to ratification, in May 2005. The convention entered into force and becomes mandatory 12 months after it has been adopted by 30 countries, representing 35 per cent of the world's merchant shipping tonnage. As of 9 January 2014, the convention had been adopted by 38 countries, representing just over 30 per cent of world's merchant shipping tonnage. During the 44th Parliament, the government claimed that the proposed biosecurity legislation implemented the majority of the Ballast Water Convention by introducing stricter ballast water management requirements than were currently in place under the old Quarantine Act. It also acknowledged that the proposed biosecurity legislation which is now enacted would need to be amended to fully implement the convention when ratified. So, whilst it is important that we step this way, we will need to do further work in relation to the convention.

I spoke briefly about what is happening on our shores. Ballast water is not the only issue that we should be concerned about. We have seen under this government a growth in incidents that did not previously occur in our waterways. Part of it is linked to the fact that we have lost of Australian seafarers—people who have the local knowledge, people who understand our waterways, people who have qualifications and skills being replaced by seafarers that do not. We have seen incidents off our coast where ships have run aground. Whilst one particular incident was a bit of a spectacular scene for local people, locals were also very concerned about what was spilling into their community. We have seen incidents of oil spills and problems with what has occurred in our Great Barrier Reef. We have seen time and time again issues related to who is employed to work on our ships. The fact that people working on our ships do not have Australian skills and qualifications continues to be a problem.

I do not understand why we would not want to encourage Australian jobs in Australian shipping. We need to look at industries in our country and how we can encourage future and new industries. We have lost the car manufacturing industry, with the loss of 40,000 jobs. We have lost shipping jobs, but we have not lost our shipping industry. There are other countries in the world, allies of ours, that have a pretty strong stance. The United States have the Jones Act, which says that every person who works in shipping around the United States coastal borders needs to be US trained and qualified. They even go as far as to say that, if you want to use port to port in America, it needs to be an American built vessel. There are other countries that have really led the way in how you not only ensure local jobs—for example, Australians being employed to work in Australian shipping—but also ensure a country's security going forward, whether it be their fuel security, their environmental security or their national security.

There is a need to have an Australian trained and skilled shipping workforce, and at the moment we are on the brink of losing that. We are on the brink of losing that because of this government's inaction in protecting Australian shipping jobs. We have heard from the union in this sector, the MUA, say that there is a problem with 457 visas, particularly in the pilot sector and the higher-skilled sector. We have also heard that there is a problem with people working on crews in horrible and appalling conditions. It has been reported in the media that they can be earning as little as $2 a day. We should condemn in the loudest possible terms any ship that arrives into an Australian port where the workers are being treated appallingly, are not being paid decent wages and do not have decent conditions.

I believe that as a country—and I encourage the government to look at how we can do it—we can rebuild employment in the shipping industry for Australian seafarers. I have met people for whom it was a family business: they are a seafarer, their grandfather was a seafarer and their father was a seafarer. In an island country, a country that relies on imports and exports, it is just ridiculous that we do not have—and are losing at a rapid pace—a skilled seafaring workforce. It is an opportunity to create good jobs in our country and, at the same time as securing and creating these good jobs with Australian skills, with MSIC passes, going through the training colleges that we have here in Australia—some of the world's best in terms of maritime security—also be able to secure our fuel and also our environment, the natural assets we have. These are our waterways, including the Great Barrier Reef. In relation to this issue of ballast water, we need to ensure that we are doing all we can to secure our environment and our borders by ensuring that we keep the nasties out and continue to maintain that clean, green image.

It is great to see that the government has brought this legislation forward. It is disappointing that it did not come up in the last parliament. It is one of those things that should not be largely debated, because it is agreed on both sides. But it has allowed us an opportunity to stand up and say that it is not the rosy, bright picture that the Deputy Prime Minister is painting. He is suggesting that he has been the person to provide the great solution when all he has done is what the previous government failed to do. He was a minister for a period and was to bring this legislation forward in the last parliament. In 2012 Labor introduced a new biosecurity bill to replace the century-old Quarantine Act. This new biosecurity bill included legislative changes in respect of international and domestic ballast water. It was already there. However, it lapsed because of the election and the dissolution of the 23rd parliament. It is disappointing that the 23rd parliament did not bring on that bill when we discussed the other biosecurity measures bill in the last parliament. But it is here, and it will ensure—if passed, and with us being a signatory to the convention on ballast water—that we are doing all we can to keep that clean, green image, which is so vital not just to our local domestic market but also to our export market.

When I was in Newcastle I had the opportunity to travel a little bit further south and meet with people involved in the fishing industry. They talked about the tuna they export. Some of the tuna stays here in Australia and some is exported. And they talked about the need to keep our marine ways, just like our land, as clean and green as possible. However, if, as a farmer, it is your land, it is a little bit easier to manage than waterways. These people spoke to me about the need for this legislation—how legislation like this does help. However, as I have said, we need to ensure that the people who are responsible for ensuring that the wrong thing is not done are doing that. If there is an Australian there who understands Australian laws then it is more likely that Australian laws will be followed. It is critical that as a country, as a parliament—a call to arms of the government—we do more to create and secure shipping jobs in the shipping industry, an industry that still exists, in our country. We have some very good seafarers out there, and at the moment they are unemployed. They want to work, and this government could do more to support them by looking at what other countries have done, looking at what a Jones Act could look like in Australia, ensuring that people who are working in Australian seas, just off our coasts, are Australians. It is an opportunity. It is a challenge to the government. But they should sit down and take seriously the need to employ more Australians on our seas.

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