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

I rise to make a few brief remarks about the Shipping Registration Amendment Bill 2018. Further contributions from the Greens will come when this matter goes to the Senate and our spokesperson, Senator Janet Rice, has the opportunity to speak on it more fully. What's become clear is that, every time the government introduce a shipping bill to this place, it's either because there are technical or minor amendments, as is substantially the case with this bill, or because they're seeking to further deregulate the industry, as they have moved to do in the past.

Most people in this country would scratch their head and wonder why it is that Australia, as an island nation with a once proud shipping fleet, has seen the number of Australian-flagged vessels drop and drop and drop at the same time as trade has gone up and up and up, especially as other countries have had the foresight to realise that, like the UK, for example, when you have a country with lots of coastline and you have a substantial reliance on shipping, it is actually an opportunity. What the government could be saying is that we've got an opportunity to secure and grow an Australian shipping industry, to grow the number of registered Australian vessels, to bring in some revenue for the government and to skill up our workforce. Other countries have done that successfully, but we're going in the opposite direction. Why are we going in the opposite direction? We're going in the opposite direction because, for too many years, accelerated by this government—but it kept on going under Labor, it must be said—we have seen a rise in the government statement that, even though we are heavily reliant on getting goods from place to place within Australia, as well as from Australia to overseas or from overseas to Australia, on our coastal shipping routes, we don't care what flag is flown on the back of those ships. As a result we have seen the decimation of our local shipping industry.

If the government were sensible, they would understand that, in exactly the same way as we can look at and regulate and potentially get some benefit, including taxation benefit, from goods that we ship by other means around Australia, we could be doing that for all the goods that are shipped from port to port around our coastline. By regulating that, by limiting the instances in which overseas-flagged vessels are able to come here and do the work of transporting from port to port around Australia, and by getting some taxation revenue from it, it could be a win for everyone. The government could increase the revenue—and that's the lesson the UK government have learnt—and we could grow jobs domestically. But, instead, we are seeing a hollowing out of our workforce and we are seeing so much of the work done on our ships that are transporting goods—and I repeat this: in many instances, just from one port to another within Australia—by people who are paid substantially less than if there was a local enterprise agreement.

How does this sometimes happen? It sometimes happens like this. You have an overseas-flagged vessel that's registered somewhere else—it doesn't matter where it's registered—and the people who are working on that vessel, before they leave their home country to come here, are asked, 'Do you approve enterprise agreement X, which will apply to your working conditions?' and they approve it, and they approve it in instances where sometimes the local union or the local workforce doesn't even know that the agreement is being signed. It is just approved.

In many instances those agreements that are signed are well above the conditions that the workers would experience in their home country. Many of them are living in near-poverty in less developed countries than Australia, so who can blame them? It is a completely legitimate position for them to take. I certainly don't blame the people who are signing up to the deals. They see an opportunity to come and do some work, including around Australia, and get paid substantially better than they would otherwise get. But these deals are at substantially lower rates than if they had been negotiated here in Australia. That leads to exploitation of the overseas workers. When they realise that they are getting dudded the employer says, 'You can arc up if you like, but we'll just send you back home.' So they are in a very tenuous position. But it also undercuts local wages and stops the development of skills here.

We're seeing with the shipping industry a repeat of what we saw with the mining boom. With the mining boom, 83 per cent of profits went overseas. After the boom was over we did not end up with a hugely skilled workforce here in Australia. The profits went overseas and the skills went back overseas as well. We lost a massive opportunity to skill up the country and use the money and save it for a rainy day. Instead we said, 'We don't care how much money we send overseas.'

The same thing is happening with shipping. We are missing out on a massive opportunity. We should be having a discussion. Instead of this bill, this minor technical bill that's before the House—or instead of previous bills the government has introduced that have just been about seeking to deregulate everything—we should be saying, 'Let's design a shipping policy that works for us.' We shouldn't be saying, 'Let's write a shipping policy that suits big multinationals who want to come to Australia and travel around Australia and then leave Australia.' And if that requires a shipping policy that says that some of these big multinationals might have to pay a bit more for the privilege of coming here or moving things from port to port, but in return we're going to end up with fewer people unemployed and more skills here, then that's a discussion that we should be having. But the government seems incapable of having that discussion. In doing so, we're going to miss out, in a number of ways, on potential boom industries of the future.

One of those industries that is looming, and that we have got to get behind, is liquid hydrogen. The IPCC has told us, crystal clear, that we have to get off coal. They told us a couple of weeks ago that, to have a decent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, two-thirds of the world's coal-fired power stations need to shut down by 2030. That is 11 or 12 years away. That is how quickly we need to transition if we're to avoid dangerous global warming. One fuel that could replace coal and gas—and the fracking that is required to extract huge amounts of gas in Australia—is renewably produced liquid hydrogen. Everyone is engaged in a race to see who can be the first to produce it cheaply and renewably, and then turn that into an industry. We have the opportunity here to be putting not LNG into the freighters that are shipping it off overseas but perhaps some form of solar fuels. Whether that's in the form of ammonia or whatever—to transport it—that's what everyone's racing to find out now. We could be exporting clean, renewable energy in the form of solar fuels to the rest of the world. And if we got our shipping policy right we could be making some money out of it and training locals up to work in that industry. But it's never going to happen if we just say, 'The only answer is to let big corporations write our shipping rules'—and that is what is happening with this government at the moment.

One of the other reasons that we have to have a better discussion about how we regulate our shipping industry than what is being suggested in this bill is that, when we have tighter regulation, we are able to better protect our environment. As the previous speaker, the member for Whitlam, said, it's the case that the big incidents in Australian waters have come from overseas-registered ships. There are many places along our coastline where we would benefit from having local captains or pilots with local knowledge who are able to navigate what can at times be very dangerous waters, and it would be better for our environment, as well as for our people, if we were to get back to having a properly supported Australian shipping industry. But, again, that's not high on the order of priorities for this government.

So, whilst this bill in and of itself isn't seeking to bring about great reform, it's notable that it's a missed opportunity and that it comes on the coat-tails of other efforts by the government to wind back support for a proper shipping industry in Australia. As mentioned, when this bill gets to the Senate, our transport spokesperson there will make it clear that the Greens stand for a proper shipping policy in this country to revitalise our shipping industry because that is good for people and that is good for the planet.

See this speech in context