Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I was interrupted yesterday, I was saying how it's a disgrace that every bit of this bill is an affront to Australian workers. The government is actively seeking to replace Australian ships with foreign ships. The government is actively seeking to replace Australian workers with foreign workers. The government is actively seeking to replace Australian wages in Australian waters with foreign wages in Australian waters. They're not even being covert about it. They're being open about it. It wouldn't be acceptable on land. Could you imagine walking into your local Woolworths or your local Coles and being confronted by a worker who has perhaps come in on a visa and they tell you, 'Oh, by the way, we're getting much lower foreign wages than the Australian who works next to us.' It wouldn't be allowed on land. It should not be allowed on water. Why does the government think it's okay to have one rule for jobs on Australian waters and another rule for jobs on Australian land? It's just incomprehensible to me. The coalition members, in speaking to this bill, have been ignoring the fact that the very real impact of this bill will be the destruction of the coastal shipping industry in Australia. We've already got zero Australian ships transporting fuel around our coast, which is a national security issue—and I'll talk to that in a moment.

What the coalition members are concentrating on is their desire to see superyachts come to Queensland, because apparently part of this bill takes GST off superyachts. We all want to see the economy go forward, but what concerns me is the cringing attitude of those opposite, which is that the only way to get the economy pumping, to get business moving, is to make things so easy and so inexpensive for not just the rich but the super rich—people who can afford at least $20,000 a week to charter a superyacht—in order to get them to come Far North Queensland and spend their money. That's their idea for economic recovery across the Far North Queensland area: encourage super-rich people to come and spend their money there rather than go to Fiji, Vanuatu or wherever. So it's a race to the bottom. You see those opposite trying to encourage the super-rich to get to Queensland. What's going to happen next? Fiji will make their fees cheaper so the boats will head back there again. Then what's going to happen? Queensland will have to go even lower and lower.

All this is to make it so inexpensive for really wealthy people—not just wealthy doctors and lawyers but superwealthy businesspeople—that they're just not paying their fair share. The shopkeepers, the tradespeople, the nurses, the teachers, the cleaners and the civil servants of Queensland still have to pay GST. They still have to pay their taxes and charges. They contribute to the economy as well through the things that they buy and the things that they do. They still have to pay their fair share. But those opposite think, 'Let's make sure the super-rich don't have to pay anything extra, and that will encourage them to come here.'

And that is in everything they do. It's not just in this bill. It's in the tax relief that they offer to the super-rich. We've seen those opposite introduce tax relief which will see those of us standing in this chamber, who are on very good money—let's not pretend otherwise; we are paid very good money to do this job—get a tax break in the coming years of $7,000 a year, when the average person in the street will get $500 a year. That's just not right. It's not right that we pay $7,000 a year less in tax when somebody on average wages pays $500 less. In everything those opposite do, it's about making life easier for those with money and making life harder for those without.

I want to come to the issue of fuel security, which is a very important issue relating to this bill. What this bill does is kill off Australian coastal shipping. You would think that as an island nation we should have a really strong maritime fleet. We should be employing and training the best sailors, engineers, naval officers, technicians, boilermakers and engine operators in the world. Instead, our coastal shipping fleet doesn't exist. We don't have Australian ships transporting fuel around our nation anymore.

This is not just a concern of those on this side of the House. I'll remind those opposite that one of their own senators, Jim Molan, a former chief of operations for coalition forces in Iraq who is now a Liberal senator, said that, if Australia's current stockpiles of petrol, diesel and aviation fuel ran dry, our military is effectively grounded. We don't have, in this country, the 90 days of fuel that is required under international conventions that we have signed. We don't have those 90 days of fuel. And you know what? We can't refine it here either. We don't have the capability anymore of looking after ourselves.

We don't have Australians on Australian shipping routes anymore. It's a national security issue. It's not just about jobs for Australians; it's a national security issue when you don't have crews who have gone through all the background checks. To get a job doing Australian shipping routes, you need to do all the background checks. The government needs to know who you are. What this government wants to do is allow foreign vessels, with foreign crews, to sail in Australian waters, and we don't know who the crews are. We don't know where they're from. We're talking about fuel loads or cargo loads that include some pretty dangerous stuff—LPG gas and other flammable material which can be put to all sorts of uses.

Australia needs Australian-crewed, Australian vessels on Australian waters. Let's be clear what this is about. Labor's proposal from 2012 allowed temporary licences for foreign vessels that were coming in and had to stop off at one port and then quickly hop to another port. We said that it doesn't make much sense to take everybody and everything off just to do one quick hop, so we allowed a temporary licence for a foreign vessel to do the occasional stop-off. It made sense. It was a practical concession. Those opposite, under the former Howard government and now in this legislation, have allowed a massive rort, where they granted those temporary licences carte blanche. Essentially, they locked out Australian vessels and Australian crews from Australian domestic routes all around the country.

During the Braddon by-election over the last few weeks, it was the third anniversary of the sacking of the crew of the Alexander Spirit, the last Australian vessel to carry fuel. These Australians were sacked because they knew that, if they sailed their vessel to Singapore, they were going to be replaced by a foreign crew who would then ply exactly the same route they used to. That's what happens under this government. It's an absolute disgrace. Jim Molan has expressed his concerns. The member for Canning, another former military officer, has expressed his concerns about fuel security in Australia and how we need better fuel security and better reserves. If this is to happen, we need it to be done by Australian crews on Australian vessels. Everything about this bill is an affront to Australia and to Australian workers. I can't believe that an Australian government would put its hand up and say they are actively seeking to get rid of Australians in Australian jobs on Australian vessels. It's a disgrace.

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