Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The minister spoke about the consultation process that occurred. A discussion paper was released on 21 March 2017. Discussions took place on 20 April 2016 with some of the unions. On 27 April 2016, there were consultations with some industry groups. Perhaps indicative of the lack of judgement and the motivation of the government, both of its so-called reform packages were launched at events hosted by the foreign shippers, not the Australian shipping industry. One of the extraordinary things that I find is that MIAL, Maritime Industry Australia Limited—the peak organisation, the peak body, which represents Australian based shipping operators and other Australian based maritime businesses—were not invited to participate in either of the meetings that were hosted on 27 April 2016. That's not the current minister's fault, but it does go to why this legislation is not only flawed; it was designed to exclude those Australian based interests. That is unfortunate.

As the member for Shortland has outlined, incidents around the coast like those involving the Pacific Adventurer and the Shen Neng have had consequences for our pristine natural environment. Fortunately, they haven't been catastrophic. A potential incident on the Great Barrier Reef could have literally billions of dollars of consequences for Australia because of the knock-on impact that it would have. One of the things that I did as the minister was to extend south the area that was required to have pilots to make sure that that protection was put in place. The environmental consequences are severe.

We also know that, in terms of the maintenance, many of these foreign ships operating around the coast are pretty ordinary, to say the least, compared with Australian based ships. We know that the maintenance simply isn't there. We know that the workforce can often be overworked and not have appropriate occupational health and safety conditions. For example, the captain of the Shen Neng was prosecuted, as he should have been, for failing to turn through the channel. As the inquiry found, that was a result of that particular gentleman not having been to sleep for a very, very long time. The sort of idea that we should have a free-for-all around our coast without consequences is simply an error of judgement.

There's the other issue of national security. We hear a lot from those opposite about the protection of borders, yet we will have consequences if the Australian shipping industry cannot continue. Foreign based ships with foreign workers will not have gone through the same security clearances that Australian seafarers have to go through. People who work in ports have to have MSIC cards and go through the whole security clearance process. These ships have a lot of fuel on them. They're often in ports and harbours, very close to where people reside in very large numbers. I think there are real national security issues which arise from that, let alone the issue of the link between the merchant fleet and our military fleet. That linkage has historically been there between the Navy and people who have worked in the merchant fleet. Their skills are interchangeable. If you don't have an Australian based maritime sector, what you won't have is the sorts of skills base of people— (Time expired)

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