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

Before I resume, I would like to congratulate the new member for Canning on his first speech and I welcome the many contributions that he will make in this place to the debates that we will be having for the rest of this term. Congratulations.

As I was saying, this bill is Work Choices on water and it fails in a number of places to secure Australian jobs, vital jobs, in the shipping industry. This bill fails the national interest. It fails to ensure that Australia has a strong shipping industry. It fails to ensure that we have good jobs in the shipping industry like we seek to have in other sectors of transport in our country. It fails the economic interest. We rely predominantly on shipping, with 99 per cent of our trade done by sea. We need to ensure that we have a strong, robust Australian shipping industry. These are good jobs that we could lock in if this government would just drop this legislation and get behind the jobs associated with it.

It fails the environmental interest. Shipping in Australian waters should maintain high environmental standards. It should ensure, through the use of Australian crewed ships, that the heavily used, pristine, important environmental areas like the Great Barrier Reef are crewed and piloted by Australians. We have seen time and time again that accidents have occurred as a result of foreign crewed ships being in some of the most important environmental seaways and waters in our country. This legislation fails the environmental test. Only through having Australian crewed vessels and Australian standards will we always ensure safety and environmental safety on our seas.

This legislation also fails the security interest. We know that screening of foreign crews is not as hard as the screening of Australian crews. I have mentioned already the fact that Australian crews have to have certain licences and certain skills. Foreign crews do not require the same. On those levels this bill fails.

But most importantly—and this is why this government needs to drop this legislation—it fails on jobs. There are 2,000 jobs directly and 8,000 jobs associated with this bill that are at risk and could be lost if this legislation is passed. That is 10,000 good, paid shipping jobs. The government needs to get serious about Australian jobs. You cannot come into this place and rant about the importance of trade and rant about the importance of exports and then not back it in by ensuring that we have legislation and rules in place that protect and secure Australian jobs. This does exactly the opposite. It seeks to do one thing: pander to the pressures of big business, only focus on costs and not focus on creating and sustaining a viable Australian shipping industry and Australian shipping jobs. It is another attempt by this government to union-bust, to break up and to undercut good Australian jobs with foreign workers and foreign flagged vessels.

I will finish with the words of Alex Kirby: 'I am an everyday working-class man with a fantastic wife and a beautiful daughter.' He wrote this when he was on the picket line on the wharves. 'These two ladies rely on me to provide them with a home, food and clothing—these essentials—and I have been fortunate enough to do this successfully until now.' These are the workers that this government will be going after if this legislation goes through. This government is not interested in Australian workers. It is not interested in the Australian maritime industry and in locking in and securing jobs. This bill is simply Work Choices on water.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish I could say it is a great pleasure to speak on this bill, the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, but it is one of the more egregious bits of legislation that the Abbott-Turnbull-whatever-comes-next government has brought into this parliament. It just goes to show you that nothing has changed. This is one bill along a continuum of bad legislation under different prime ministers and, of course, a whole range of different faces on the frontbench.

But one thing has stayed the same: the recklessness in the policy making that we are seeing from this government basically around one ideology. The member for Bendigo hit the nail on the head when she said that this is Work Choices on water. As she finished she said this is all about getting the unions. They are so intent on getting the unions and so intent on getting unionised Australian workers—in this case, seafarers. They are so intent on doing that. Let's make no mistake, 88 per cent of the regulatory savings presented in this bill, 88 per cent of the regulatory savings supposedly reaped by the community, are actually the wages and conditions of Australian seafarers.

I wish I could say that this is something that is old, something that has been around forever and that Australian conservatism has always been this myopic, but it has not. I remember vividly the Ships of shame report from 1992 because it was one of the first parliamentary reports that I ever read. I must have been a very keen and avid young Labor participant. I read this report and I moved a number of motions in Young Labor because I was so amazed at the state of seafaring around the world. It was such a mess. Flag-of-convenience workforces were treated terribly. Environmental standards were completely ignored and only existed on paper. Insurance standards only existed on paper.

The maintenance of rust bucket ships that were left to sail the oceans of the world, including Australians sea lanes, was documented in the Ships of shame report, a report by this parliament. It was done by a bipartisan committee and it was a bipartisan report. John Anderson was on this committee, so by no means was it a Labor report. There was no dissenting report in it. It was a report of this parliament that was presented to this parliament unanimously. The way it introduces itself in chapter 1 should be of interest to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because, of course, you are a Western Australian. Point 1.1 of this report says:

On 21 July 1991 the bow section fell off the Greek registered oil tanker Kirki while enroute from the Arabian Gulf to Kwinana in Western Australia.

It fell off. The bow of the ship fell off into the ocean off the coast of Western Australia. It was an oil tanker, and there was oil spewing out of the front of a bowless ship. There was a massive hole in the front of it. It was not as big as one might conjure up in one's imagination, but it was a big hole. There were high seas, and it was laden with 82,660 tonnes of light crude oil and was 55 miles of the Western Australian coast.

The ship did not sink and its crew was rescued. Were it not for the bravery of the Australian recovery crew who went on and secured that ship then this report would have something very different in it. It would be talking about an environmental disaster that would have been etched in Western Australian memories and etched in Australian memories, because the bow of the ship would have fallen off, the ship would have listed uncontrollably and it would have broken up, and 82,000 tonnes of light crude oil would have been off the Western Australian coast. That is the consequence of having unseaworthy ships registered under flags-of-convenience with poorly trained, poorly paid and often abused crews. That is the consequence of that system. You play the lottery if you allow flags-of-convenience to just roam around your sea lanes without appropriate measures to prevent disasters like this.

The Ships of shame report at point 1.2 states:

This ship should have been structurally sound. It was in class with a reputable classification society and had been regularly inspected. Yet it suffered a major structural failure due to corrosion which had gone undetected by the classification society, the ships managers, charterer and the crew. Consequently, the lives of the crew were put at risk and the coast of Western Australia and the marine environment faced a major pollution threat which was only narrowly averted.

Point 1.3 goes on to the competence of the crew et cetera. So we have these very good parliamentary reports—the Ships of shame report and its subsequent report Ships of shame: a sequel, another bipartisan report done by the same committee. It should echo in the mind of the Leader of the House, if he were here or was listening, because he was on that committee with that follow-up report.

Yet, what do we have this government bringing in today? We have them bringing in a bill that implements Work Choices on water and sacrifices Australian sovereignty, Australian sea lanes, to these rust buckets, to the international standard of the flag-of-convenience. We have these Liberal members from Tasmania who have the memory span of a goldfish. They would not know about the Ships of shame report. They would not know what the Kirki was. They do not remember the more recent maritime issues that we have had off Newcastle and the Great Barrier Reef and, frankly, they do not care. All they care about is this moment. You wonder what goes through their heads. You hear some of their rhetoric and you think to yourself: 'They're not really thinking about the national interest. They haven't done much research or looked into this issue.'

It is a very, very important issue because it goes to the heart of our national sovereignty, so much so that the home of the free market, the United States, has the Jones Act, which protects US coastal waters and the ports within them from flags-of-convenience, from foreign competition. Indeed, for any island nation, you would think that it is kind of important to have some national capacity to move your own goods around your own ports. Indeed, it is important to have some national capacity, some Australian flagged ships, in times of national emergency. It is kind of important, you would have thought. Most Australians, if they were listening to this, would think: 'That's a sensible proposition. Protect the environment from rust bucket flags-of-convenience ships, these ships of shame. Protect the national interest, the national sovereignty, by guarding our own sea lanes,' which is no different to any other section of the Australian nation. As the member for Grayndler pointed out, the equivalent is to say that you should allow trucks from any other nation to go down our highways. Why have a licensing system? Why have Australian registration? Why not just adopt the standards of the rest of the world? It will be cheaper. And that is what this is supposedly all about—that it is cheaper, that there is some sort of efficiency to being unsafe, to not guarding your national interest.

It is an extraordinarily short-sighted proposition from this government—the Abbott-Turnbull or is it the Turnbull-Abbott government? Mr Abbott has been sitting up there all week like a Cheshire cat. The corridor just down from my office is sort of the 'corridor of tragic souls', the cast-offs or the lazy Susan, or something like that, I think, it was at the time, that the now Prime Minister made. This is extraordinarily short-sighted legislation that has come into the parliament. Nothing has really changed for this government. They are so determined to get at the unions and to get at some poor Australian sailors. I have a few in my electorate and they are good Australians. They care about the country. They work hard. They are away from home a lot.

Of all people, politicians should understand the consequences of being away from home. You might do it, but the rates of pay for Australian seafarers are reasonable and they have to be to attract Australian workers. But if you just throw it open to the rest of the world, to the rest of the world's standards, you will soon find things dropping—environmental standards, safety standards, national security standards. You cannot tell me that a ship that is unsafe, unseaworthy, with a crew that is underpaid, treated appallingly and sourced from god knows where with god knows whose standards is not going to be a national security question when it docks at ports. We know that is the major way illicit goods come into this country. We know they come through the docks, in one form or another. They come from overseas, in one form or another. Yet this government, which prides itself on national security, tells us they are out there protecting us all.

We have just heard the member for Canning's first speech. It is a good day for him. He talked about making sure that the police and the ADF have all the tools at hand to protect this country. Yet on either side of his maiden speech is this bill that completely deregulates Australian shipping to the standards of the rest of the world. We know the consequences of that for our national security. We know the consequences of that for our environment. We know the consequences of that for Australian workers and wages. It is an appalling proposition.

There are reports that are within living memory; they are not lost to the parliament. It is interesting to read these reports. Recommendation 11 of the Ships of shamereport is:

The Federal Government deny entry to ships which do not meet ILO 147 standards in relation to crew employment conditions from trading in Australian waters.

The tenor of this report and its later recommendations is about lifting the rest of the world to our standards, not degenerating to theirs, not falling to the lowest common denominator. It was a bipartisan report of this parliament and was taken seriously.

My friend and a person I greatly respect, Paul Neville, later served on that committee and did a very good job for this country. I have served on that committee. So you wonder what is going through this government's head—if anything is going through its head. All they seem to care about is chaos and division and who gets to be a minister. I am very glad for Minister Ciobo, at the table. He was lifted to greatness after all that time being a parliamentary secretary. I always felt sorry for him, because he picked poorly in the past. I know what that is like. I digress.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We should all form a club!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Notwithstanding the humour at the table, this is a terrible bill. It should be shelved. That would be the ideal thing. It should be binned in the national interest. Perhaps those backbenchers from Tasmania with a memory span of a goldfish should go back and read the reports by their predecessors. They were good reports and protected the national interest. (Time expired)

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to follow the member for Wakefield on this Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. He is absolutely right. This is terrible legislation. This legislation is not just about shipping—although it focuses on shipping—it is part of the coalition's ongoing strategy to dismantle Australian industrial laws and drive down workplace conditions and wages. It is also about trying to destroy the Australian unions, particularly the Maritime Union of Australia.

Work Choices is not dead—and buried and cremated—as the former Prime Minister has said; it is simply dressed up differently and implemented by a new team. Since its election, we have seen this government watering down labour-market testing for 457 skilled visa entrants. We have seen the outsourcing of Australian contracts to other countries. We have seen foreign workers being allowed into Australia under special provisions in free trade agreements. We have seen the use of student and working-holiday visas being distorted and rorted. We have seen the expansion of the Seasonal Worker Program. We now have a campaign to remove penalty rates and we have seen the outsourcing of government jobs. All of those measures, collectively, go towards putting downward pressure on wages and workplace conditions. They are measures designed to force Australians to work for lower rates, for longer hours and with less protection.

When you put all those pressures on workers, they cannot complain. If they do, they will lose their jobs to people who—either out of desperation or because they are overseas workers prepared to work at a lower rate—are prepared to do their jobs. That is exactly what this government wants, as a means for pushing down wages and conditions.

This legislation is not about productivity, efficiency and competitiveness as the government would have you believe. Australia is, indeed, an island nation and our waters form part of our economy, our economic zone. Within those waters we have mineral exploration, fishing and tourism, and they all contribute to the Australian economy. The Australian shipping sector is an important industry sector, because Australia depends on it so much.

This legislation enables foreign vessels to operate within what we would normally refer to as Australian waters, doing Australian work. It begs the question: would the government have considered doing exactly the same with our land-transport systems? Would we have allowed foreign trucking companies to come into this country using their labour to carry the cargo we see carried across Australia every day? Would we have allowed foreign companies to come in and not only run our rail systems but also bring in their own labour to do it? Would we have done the same with our internal air services? We would not. The Australian people would not have tolerated it and would have made it absolutely clear that this is not what we want to see here. They would have wanted to ensure that whatever jobs were created in this country went to Australians first. And yet this legislation does exactly the opposite. It effectively says that when it comes to shipping—one of the industry sectors of this country—it is okay to allow foreign vessels to come in, and with those foreign vessels will undoubtedly come foreign workers.

There are other concerns about this legislation that I will hopefully get to in the time that I have, but the bottom line of this legislation is that it will cost Australian jobs. As we have seen with other decisions of this government, caring for and protecting Australian jobs seems to be at the bottom of the agenda. We have seen them decimate the car manufacturing industry in this country. This will not only cost tens of thousands of jobs but will also see the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of research and development that is carried out each year, in addition to the capability that we will lose through the loss of expertise and skills that have been built up over many, many years.

We then have the concern in respect of the environmental risks associated with allowing foreign vessels into this country. I note that in recent years we have had three specific examples—the Shen Neng 1 in 2010, the Pacific Adventurer in 2009 and the China SteelDeveloper in 2015. They were all off the Queensland coast, along the Great Barrier Reef area, and they all caused problems. None of them were Australian ships; they were all foreign flagged ships. It is not Australian crews and Australian vessels that are the ones causing problems for us, it is the foreign flagged vessels. Equally disturbing is the fact that many of those vessels, from allegations made, are crewed by what is virtually slave labour. Certainly, we cannot prove it because we cannot get onto the vessels because they do not come under Australian jurisdiction, but those allegations cannot simply be dismissed. I will come to that a bit later on with some other facts that I find very, very concerning when it comes to literally outsourcing our shipping in this country.

If a foreign vessel comes into Australia and is able to undercut the current price and cost of Australian ships, the most likely reasons it is able to do so are that it can cut wages, it can probably have fewer staff and it can probably make those staff work for longer hours. Again, it cannot be proven, but they are, in my view, the only real areas where real cuts can be made, and from the reports that I have heard that is exactly what happens. When you do that to the crews, they have no interest in ensuring that the ship operates and complies with all the regulations of this country. They simply will do the job that they are forced to do and not complain or say anything about it.

Apart from exploiting their crews, we also know, from a report released only this year by TRACE International—an antibribery and compliance firm—that shipping is exposed to more corruption than any other industry. If that is the case, again, you would think that the government would want to be very, very careful about what it does with industry sectors in this country and the decisions it makes when it comes to the outsourcing of shipping within Australian waters. Indeed, I wonder how many of those foreign flagged vessels, even if they were to be licensed, given the contract and allowed to work in Australian waters, would then open their doors and say, 'We are prepared to take on Australian crew.' I doubt very much that any one of them would do that, because as soon as they took on Australian crew, they would not only be under the watchful eye of Australians who probably would care about what the ship was doing but, more importantly, they would also have to pay them Australian wage rates, and that in turn would make them unviable given that they are operating on cheap or Third World labour, as many other speakers have also alluded to.

I had a quick look at where most of the vessels of the world are registered. My understanding from the most recent list I could get is that Panama has about 25 per cent of the world's registered fleet. Liberia and the Marshall Islands follow. I also noticed that most of the developed countries that are large shipping fleet owners register their ships in one of those countries that I alluded to. In fact, as of 2009 the top five flags account for some 50 per cent of the world's deadweight tonnage in terms of shipping. That says something to me as to what is going on when I look at those lists and see where all of these ships are registered. I am happy to list the top 10 countries that appear on that list: Panama, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Malta, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Cyprus, Cambodia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Belize and it goes on. They are all countries that one would have concerns about in respect of the way they would operate their fleets. That is exactly why they are countries where ships are registered—countries that, I have no doubt, do not maintain either the shipping standards or the employment standards that we do here in Australia. This government would be fully aware that they are the most likely places where the ships would be registered and possibly crewed from, and yet it is prepared to say: 'That's okay. You can come into our waters and you can take the jobs of people within Australia.'

Productivity gains do not come from driving down wages or bringing in cheap labour. What that might do is increase the profits of business, but I doubt very much that it is the smart way to improve productivity. There are better ways; there are a smarter ways. As the member for Perth also made very clear in her press release today, what we will inevitably see is a loss of skills in the maritime industries of this country, because as the shipping work diminishes so will the jobs and so will the skills that go with them. That is something that we should be deeply concerned about. We have not only seen it in the car-making industry; we are also now seeing it in the shipping industry. It just makes me wonder: where will this government stop? When will this government realise that it is in the national interest to maintain those skills and to have the ability to make things in this country, to produce things and to market things to other places in the world?

I want to finish with some comments that were made in the minister's speech. The minister's second reading speech on this was filled with flowery rhetoric and vague control and compliance statements. I want to quote some of the words he used: 'simplified permit system' and 'complex and burdensome licensing system'. If those were the problems, one could fix permit systems and licensing systems without sourcing the work to foreigners. Clearly, those were just an excuse for doing what the government wants to do. Then we have comments like these:

… a greater range of cruise ship services around the coast …

… … …

… ships trading predominantly in Australia have Australians undertaking the key skilled positions on board.

… … …

… where these ships engage primarily in domestic trade, in domestic waters, they are covered by domestic workplace relations arrangements.

Lastly there is the comment:

… if a foreign ship is predominantly operating in Australia—that is, for more than 183 days … in a 12-month permit period—it will be subject to domestic workplace relations arrangements.

Who is going to monitor all of those things? I doubt very much that the government has allocated additional resources to do that. If the government truly believes that the ship operators are just going to comply with all of those requirements just because the government writes it into a piece of legislation, then I think the government is clearly deluded. These are operators who know how to manage their shipping fleets, who do so across the world and who, I suspect, know how to get around the obligations imposed upon them. When you have the issue that, after a 183-day period in a 12-month period, they will be subjected to domestic workplace relations arrangements, of course the shipping owners will make sure that, at the end of 183 days, that ship will go somewhere else and do some work in another part of the world, and a new ship owned by the same company will come in and replace it. They are not fools. They will work around these compliance measures and they will do it with ease—not to mention that it will simply not be possible for the government to oversee and ensure that they are complying with the standards that it claims are enacted as part of these measures.

We oppose this legislation and we do so with good reason. It not only destroys an Australian industry but it destroys Australian jobs and it is consistent with the theme of this government of destroying Australian jobs, driving down workplace wages and conditions and destroying unions in this country.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, in keeping with my approach to this issue on several occasions over a number of years. As the representative of Western Australia's principal general cargo port, as the representative of an electorate that is home to the shipbuilding capacity and innovation of the Australian Marine Complex and as the representative of a community that is also home to the largest branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, I have consistently supported measures designed to strengthen and protect Australian shipping and I have argued against changes that seek to weaken the Australian coastal shipping sector.

In this debate it is imperative to remember the wide-ranging and acute importance of shipping to our country. At a time when many Australians are fortunate to experience international travel by air, we cannot afford to ignore the fact that 99 per cent of our trade is moved by sea, that we bear the fifth-largest shipping task of any nation and that fully 10 per cent of all global trade by weight is carried to or from Australia by ship. That magnitude of shipping work is the responsibility and predicament of an island nation like ours and it does bring opportunities as well as challenges—for example, in the ability to move both export and import freight by rail and then by sea, or vice versa, to a greater extent than by truck alone. Indeed, we are yet to take full advantage of that opportunity, with all the benefits that such an approach promises in terms of reduced carbon emissions and community impact.

But, as an island nation reliant on maritime trade routes and on the ships that ply them, we also face challenges. We also need to consider the fragilities inherent in our circumstances. The security and certainty of sea freight are essential to Australia's economic wellbeing. More than that, they are essential to our safe and functional existence. We are a nation with a degree of self-sufficiency in a crisis context, but there are some key areas—including the supply of petroleum—in which we are hugely dependent on sea freight. Our defence capacity is also reliant, in times of conflict or in peacekeeping engagements, on the support of the merchant marine. In those situations, Australian flagged ships—owned and operated in Australia, crewed by Australians—assume an even greater value. Other nations, including our No. 1 security partner, the United States, recognise this in their regulatory approach to domestic shipping. Why would Australia, with greater reliance on sea freight and a vastly smaller defence capacity, take a different path?

The enormously significant Australian shipping task is undertaken in this country by some 10,000 workers. It is an industry, a trade, a tradition, that goes back to our origins as a nation. It trains and employs people to the highest standards and, in so doing, helps raise the standards that apply in other parts of the world. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work the Maritime Union does, through the International Labour Organization's Maritime Labour Convention, in active pursuit of safe and fairly paid work for all seafarers—a group of workers who throughout history have tended to be subject to some of the worst forms of workplace tyranny, hardship and harm. It would be a mistake for anyone to think that such practices are gone from the seven seas.

The changes before us put Australian shipping jobs on the block. This bill pursues so-called efficiencies and cost savings only insofar as they can be achieved by throwing Australian jobs to the wind. As I have noted before, the bill's own cost-benefit ratio analysis indicates that 93 per cent—or 1,089—of coastal shipping jobs will be lost through these changes, with only 200 jobs created in other industries. We do not need to wait and see how this might pan out if the legislation is passed, because we already have the clear example of the advice provided by senior federal government officials in the department of infrastructure to North Star Cruises Australia. In that instance, a successful Australian-based shipping company that has grown from three to 50-odd employees over a number of years was encouraged to consider replacing its Australian workforce with foreign workers. If the government's shipping regulation vandalism goes ahead, then North Star Cruises Australia, which has a presence in Fremantle, and operates luxury adventure cruises on its yacht, True North, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, will face competition from foreign operators paying far lower wages, in Australian waters, throughout the 180-day tourist season. Under the proposed legislation, it is only after 183 days operating in Australian waters that foreign flagged vessels will be required to pay employees Australian award wages.

It is instructive to note this key passage from The Australia Institute's submission to the Senate inquiry, which states:

Foreign flagged and crewed ships already have considerable access to the Australian coastal shipping market, making Australian coastal shipping possibly the only service sector facing competition that can use foreign labour while actually operating in Australia. By contrast it is impossible for foreign trucking companies, rail companies or any other service provider to operate in Australia using international labour paid at international rates. As crewing costs make up between 36 per cent and 42 per cent of ship operating costs, this puts Australian crews at a 15-20 per cent disadvantage against international ships in terms of operating costs.

If we want to look down the telescope to see where this bill will take us, let us remember that under the Howard government we saw the devastation of the Australian flagged coastal shipping fleet, from 55 vessels in 1996 to a mere 21 vessels in 2007. The Labor government worked hard to repair that damage as part of its comprehensive review and reform process. As others have noted, the unstinting work of the member for Grayndler helped to create a foundation for a revitalised coastal shipping sector, with proper support and incentives for Australian flagged vessels employing Australian seafarers and a package of measures focused on maritime skills and training.

The health of an Australian coastal shipping industry, the existence of Australian flagged vessels, and the maintenance of Australian shipping jobs for high-skilled, well-trained and properly paid and protected Australian workers is paramount for a secure and sustainable Australian future. And so it is irresponsible and reckless for this coalition government to weaken our coastal and Australian flagged shipping capacity, and thereby create economic, environmental and security risks that no responsible government would contemplate.

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

The Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 is a bill that, by design, will destroy the Australian shipping industry. This is an industry that has been on its knees for some time. It was not saved by legislation from the previous government, but it will be dealt a death blow if this legislation passes; and the reason for that is that the bill, almost in terms, is designed to remove every piece of protection that exists for the Australian shipping industry. You do not need to look much further than the analysis from the government that supports this bill that says, 'Expect 1,000 jobs to go.' I am not aware of any other time in this parliament, in recent memory, where a government has come up and said, 'Here's a bill that'll cost you a thousand jobs; please pass it.' That is what this government is seeking that we do.

You only have to take a little bit of a step back and look at the history to understand the dire situation that the Australian shipping industry finds itself in. As the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers have been pointing out, we have lost four Australian crewed ships in recent months, and that follows another four that were lost after the legislation was passed back in 2012. So we now have five ships operating under a transitional general licence, and that is due to sunset in 2017. At least that gives some measure of protection for Australian crews, but what about the situation of Australian flagged ships? Well, we have lost another couple of those since the legislation was passed under the previous government, and so we are left in a situation now where most of the ships operating in Australian waters are operating on temporary licences, and if this bill passes then what is left of Australian flagged ships is likely to go as well. What we will almost certainly end up with, if this bill passes, is an Australian shipping industry that is constituted by a few vessels operating in the Bass Strait. All of this is in an island country—a country that is girt by sea. We will be one of the few island nations that has no shipping industry to speak of. The ships that will run from port to port around the Australian coast will not be Australian flagged or Australian crewed.

There will be expanded opportunities now for what were meant to be temporary visas for foreign seafarers who might come into Australian waters and then go out. That situation is now going to be made permanent. In effect, anyone operating around Australia will be able to use an existing but now newly available category of visa to ensure that the workers on that ship do not have to comply with Australian industrial law.

What is happening here is that not only are we about to see the end of Australian flagged ships operating around our island continent, but also we are about to see the whole of Australian waters carved out from the operation of Australian labour law. This follows previous attempts from this government to do this, some more successful than others, including for people who are working in connection with offshore resource projects. Most people would think that, if a resource project is operating in Australian waters—for example, building a new floating gas platform—and if ships were working in connection with it, the people working on those ships might be governed by Australian labour law. Well, no. This government has gone to great lengths—and we have stopped them a couple of times in the Senate, but they are still intent on flouting the will of this parliament—to say: 'We are quite happy to just carve out whole areas where labour law does not apply.' They have done that with offshore resource projects, and now, with this bill, they are doing it for all the waters around Australia.

We are going to lose not only a shipping industry but a skills base because there will no longer be an incentive for anyone to run Australian crews in ships around our country. So the training for those crews, which currently takes place in various places around Australia, will go as well—that is, the training colleges and the infrastructure that supports them. Can you imagine saying, 'We will allow trucks to go up and down the Hume Highway that do not have to be registered in Australia, the operators do not have to have an Australian licence and the normal rules do not apply to them.' That would be an absurd situation. No-one in this country would tolerate us deregulating the Hume Highway, but that is what this government is doing for our shipping lanes, for our shipping highways around this country. They are saying, 'You do not have to have Australian registration and you do not have to comply with Australian conditions.' This is deregulation and neoliberalism gone mad. This is the Australian government saying, 'We are quite happy to remove any protection, industrial or safety or environmental, that could potentially stand in the way of companies making huge profits. We will remove that from the area surrounding our country.' It is neoliberalism gone mad because it will result in the loss of jobs and it will not result in any net benefit to Australia; it is only going to assist large corporations that can already afford to pay for Australian crews. It will assist them to cut their wages bill by being able to employ workers from overseas in what is, by definition, a mobile industry, where it is possible to go to another port, pick people up and bring them here.

The reason that I say it is neoliberalism gone mad is that not only is it not going to benefit Australia but our trading partners are not doing this. This is not the direction that other countries are going. Other countries that have substantial coastlines are doing the opposite. The government would know that, in the US free trade agreement that exists with the US and has been in place for some time, the US specifically reserves the right to regulate its own coast and do what other governments are doing, like Indonesia, and that is say, 'This is an economic opportunity for us. If we regulate what happens around our coastline, we can create jobs for people.' I reiterate that you would think that most people in Australia would think that, if you are taking something from one port to another in Australia, it would probably be done by an Australian crew and perhaps an Australian ship. There is not only the opportunity to regulate it and provide jobs locally but we could raise revenue as well. That is what other countries do. They say, 'If you operate in our waters and you move things from port to port, then we will charge you for that and we will raise revenue from it.' Other countries have successfully combined a successful shipping industry with a revenue stream. So the government is not only about to smash jobs and smash an industry; it is about to do itself out of money at a time when the Treasurer tells us repeatedly that the budget is under pressure.

What we do know is that it will not only hurt jobs and hurt potential revenue streams but it will make the area around this country less safe. The government tells us, 'No. It's okay. We will make sure nothing happens,' but, if you look at the number of shipping occurrences reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in 2005 to 2012, you can see that 611 vessels registered in other countries were reported, which is almost triple that of reports for Australian vessels. So we lose the ability to regulate in the way that we would like for economic benefit but also for environmental benefit and safety benefit, because we know what the consequences are when something goes wrong. We are dealing with potential oil spills. We are dealing with potential damage to areas like our reefs. We are dealing with potential damage to some of the most important parts of our environment that Australians love and want to have protected. Why risk our fisheries, why risk our coastal environment and why risk our Great Barrier Reef simply so that companies that are already making a lot of money can make a bit more?

Crucially, we are in many ways about to give up our sovereignty over what happens in the waters around us. We will perhaps become the first island nation to no longer have the capacity for a merchant navy in the way we used to, and we could also become the first island nation that says, 'We don't mind if this area around our country is serviced by people who are not from this country and return no economic benefit to this country.' That is an astounding proposition from a government that is confronting high unemployment rates and especially high youth unemployment rates when it should be searching for new ways of ensuring that people in Australia get some benefit from the natural resources available to us. That should include moving from port to port around this country, following the lead of places like the UK and at least being in line with what the likes of the US are doing, looking more closely at places like Indonesia and saying, 'There is an opportunity for us. There is an opportunity to not only save jobs but save the shipping industry and raise money as well.'

The fact that this government comes before this place with a bill that it shamefacedly says is going to cost 1,000 jobs is reason enough to oppose it, but I urge this House and also the other place to send the government back to the drawing board and say, 'We have massive opportunities, economic opportunities, if we want to protect our shipping industry and nurture it. We only have to look at other countries.' That is the direction we should be taking instead of this, which will smash the Australian shipping industry.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As with so many of my colleagues I rise tonight to speak against the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 and to raise significant concerns about this government bill. This is a bill that removes revitalising Australian shipping from the objects of Australian coastal shipping legislation. It is a piece of legislation about which the government ought to be ashamed, because it replaces preference for an Australian flag on ships working the Australian coast with indifference to flagging—that is, flags-of-convenience ships that are then to be placed on the same level as our own Australian ships and Australian-flagged ships. When a ship has an Australian flag it is subject to Australian standards, but the flags-of-convenience arrangement will allow ships to avoid Australian standards and regulations.

As so many Labor speakers have said in the debate on this bill, Labor's position is quite clear. If you are hauling freight by rail you are entitled to the benefit of Australian regulations, Australian protections and Australian workplace protections. If you are hauling freight by truck, then you are entitled to Australian wages, to Australian conditions and to the benefit and the protection of Australian regulations. We believe that if you are hauling freight by ship you should have the same entitlement to be protected under Australian law and have the benefit of Australian regulations and Australian workplace laws.

This is yet another issue where the differences between the coalition and Labor are so stark. We believe in Australian jobs. We stand up for Australian jobs and no amount of silly name-calling by the coalition will ever stop us, as Labor people, from standing up for Australian jobs. Whether it is this 'Work Choices on water' legislation or whether it is the discussion we are having about the implementation of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, where Labor is standing up for Australian labour market testing and skills testing and the coalition does not care about Australian jobs. They would rather call us racist for daring to stand up for Australian jobs than actually really engaging with the underlying issues there.

If you think about the coalition's record when it comes to standing up for Australian jobs and Australian workers, this is 'Work Choices on water'. This is all about taking away pay and conditions from workers. Look no further than their original Work Choices, the legislation that was so comprehensively rejected by the Australian people at the 2007 election. Like this legislation, that was all about undermining the pay and conditions of Australian workers. It was legislation that was all about dividing and conquering. Look at the track record of the coalition by looking even further back to the first years of the Howard government and the attempt to bring in the Work Choices style legislation at that time. Obviously, it took a coalition majority Senate for the then coalition government to get their wish and implement Work Choices, the radical right-wing industrial relations reform that was introduced. It was so radical and so right-wing that it was completely inconsistent with Australian values and the Australian people rejected it utterly and completely, and that is very obvious. But they have not learnt. They do not care about industrial relations benefits for working people. They do not care about pay and conditions and they do not care about Australian jobs.

If you want another example of that, look at the comments the Prime Minister has been making about penalty rates recently. They are talking about penalty rates as though they were some sort of anachronism and were just not needed any more, as though the weekends are the same as any other week day. As Ged Kearney of the ACTU has said, when they play the grand final on a Tuesday morning then you can tell me that weekends don't matter any more. We had a pretty good grand final for Queensland supporters recently, and I can tell you it was not played on a Tuesday morning. It was an excellent game and it was on a Sunday. Sundays do mean something. Workplace relations protections mean something. Penalty rates, for that matter, mean something. When you talk about cutting penalty rates you are talking about cutting the pay of low-paid workers and of middle-income workers.

The Prime Minister's attempt to backpedal this week, with his claim that he was just talking about enterprise bargaining, has been completely transparent for everyone. Of course we have enterprise bargaining. We have had it broadly across this country since the Keating and Brereton reforms of 1993. But the Prime Minister was not talking about negotiating better conditions and building on the conditions to leave working people better off. That is not what he was talking about. He was talking about cutting penalty rates for working people. When you talk about cutting penalty rates for the person who is bringing you your coffee or the person who is making your brunch when you sit in a cafe, you are talking about cutting the pay of some of our lowest paid workers. It is not good enough. It is not good enough to say that low-paid workers should get a pay cut.

It is a matter of fact that in this country lower paid workers, people at the bottom of the income distribution, have benefitted proportionately less than people at the top of the income distribution from the benefits of Australia's growth and from the boom we have had the benefit of over recent decades. It is a matter of fact. If you have a look at a recent report from NATSEM for Anglicare Australia, they modelled the effect of some of the Abbott/Turnbull government changes, looked at the changes moving forward and looked at the likely living standard projections for the future, and, on the projections they considered, not only do you see people in the bottom end of the income distribution benefitting less from Australia's prosperity than people at the top of the income distribution, but in fact what that modelling suggested is that people in the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution would actually see living standards decline over the next decade. Not only would inequality continue to grow, but it would actually leave households worse off over the next decade, compared to where they are now. That is not good enough. But that shows you just how little this government cares about living standards for everyday Australian people, for people particularly at the bottom and middle of the income distribution, but not those at the top end of town.

It shows you how little they care about the cost of living pressures on households that they would even consider suggesting that low-paid workers, people who are reliant on penalty rates to make up their wage, take a pay cut. They are out of touch. This is an out of touch government led by an out of touch Prime Minister, people who have no idea what it is like to have these pressures discussed around the table. This example, this job-destroying legislation that we are debating tonight, is yet another example of just how out of touch the Prime Minister's government is in relation to jobs and working conditions.

As I said, we are a party who stand up for Australian jobs. We have always been a party who stand up for Australian jobs. We believe in making sure that people are not vulnerable to exploitation. The whole point of this legislation is to remove protections to allow people to get around Australian protections and regulation. That leaves people open to exploitation. Our shipping industry, which employs 10,000 Australian workers in direct and indirect roles, is an industry in itself. It deserves a regulatory regime that allows it to operate on a level playing field. That is what happens in every other industry, including, as I said earlier, in road and rail, and also in airfreight. This is an industry, like any other industry, where if you work in Australia you should have the benefit of Australian wages and Australian conditions and you should have the benefit of the protection of Australian laws.

When Labor took office in 2007, the Australian shipping industry was in a state of decline. Under the then Howard coalition government, the number of Australian-flagged vessels working domestic trade routes plunged from 55 in 1996 to 21 in 2007. Labor introduced new laws designed to revitalise the Australian shipping industry which followed on from unanimous recommendations of a 2008 parliamentary inquiry and extensive consultation with stakeholders. The aim 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 the international trade, coastal shipping reform, and a workplace package focusing on maritime skills development. Since the day it was sworn in, this government has promised to repeal these laws, undermining their effect and deterring investment in Australian-flagged shipping. Uncertainty has had the effect of continuing the decline in the Australian trading fleet.

This bill is all about ripping apart those reforms and removing the level playing field for Australian shipowners operating in their home waters in the coastal trade. It removes support for the industry and replaces it with nothing—and isn't that typical of the coalition government, with their reckless approach to industry policy, which has seen a terrible effect on Australian jobs? And they do not care. As you will recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, the then Prime Minister mentioned that some workers who had lost their jobs as a consequence of industry change had been 'liberated' from their jobs. How contemptuous—how disrespectful to say that they had been liberated from their jobs. I am sure that there will be opportunities to reflect on that sentiment.

We are an island nation—the point has been made by everyone who has spoken in this debate against this bill. We have a greater interest, as an island nation, in a viable local maritime sector than most other nations. We have an economic interest, we have an environmental interest and we have a security interest. These interests are undermined by this reckless legislation. We have an economic interest because we rely on shipping for 99 per cent of our trade, including an increasing amount of our petroleum supply. We have an environmental interest because of course we need high environmental standards in a nation famous for the Great Barrier Reef and also for having amazing natural resources—and I might say particularly given our increase in tourism as such an important service export industry for this nation, which is only becoming more important as time goes on. We have a security interest. We know that screening foreign crews is harder than screening Australian crews. The Office of Transport Security acknowledges this, but a higher risk profile is not factored into the costs of this package. Given that each of those three interests is undermined by this legislation, that is, in and of itself, a sufficient and important reason why this bill ought to be opposed.

It is a bill that, really, has at its heart ideology, not an evidence base. Members of the coalition have spoken in this place before, saying, 'Policy should be evidence based.' When are we going to start seeing it from the coalition? When are we going to see laws that actually reflect the needs of this nation, the needs of Australian working people and the importance of protecting Australian jobs, instead of this sort of ideological nonsense? When are we going to see it? Now is a time when unemployment is as bad as it has been for decades. We have 800,000 people on the unemployment queues in Australia. We have a situation where, since May 2014—not so coincidentally, the same time as the coalition government's first budget—unemployment has been six per cent or higher, worse than the worst unemployment rates during the global financial crisis. Unemployment is a disgrace in this country. The coalition government should stop worrying about ideology and think about what is going to be done to protect Australian jobs and Australian working conditions.

I do not hold out much hope for that because, if you look at the track record—the track record of then Prime Minister John Howard in 1996, the track record of Work Choices in 2006 and the track record of the current Prime Minister's recent discussions and comments about cutting penalty rates—the fact is that the real reason that this government will never really stand up for Australian workers and Australian jobs is that, at its heart, it does not care about Australian jobs and Australian working people's pay and conditions. At its heart, it is completely out of touch with the pressures around kitchen tables in the households of Australia. At its heart, it knows that we have increasing inequality. This government knows that living standards are going to decline for the bottom end of the income distribution if policies do not change, but it does not care. This government is a government that thinks, 'My mates are all right.' When people are at the bottom end of the income distribution and rely on protection from Australian regulation and rely on Australian wages and conditions, this government just does not think that those people deserve its attention.

We disagree. We will always stand up for Australian jobs. We will always stand up for fair workplace laws. We will always stand up for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work—a basic tenet that this country was built on. We will always stand up for Australian jobs and Australian pay and conditions.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill because it is yet another example of a job-destroying piece of legislation from the Turnbull government, which has set itself against working Australia. It is a government by the coalition of the Liberal and National parties, which have as part of their DNA an attitude of setting themselves against working Australia. We see that, and we saw that through the Work Choices legislation under the then Howard government. From the moment this government was elected in 2013, we have seen act after act and decision after decision made by this government and actions taken by this government which have destroyed Australian jobs. This is just another example of that. We saw it in the way the former Treasurer, Treasurer Hockey, goaded the Australian car industry out of the country—an unprecedented action, from a treasurer of this nation, inviting the major car companies of this country to leave, in effect. In my electorate, being a car-making city, we feel the significance of that. We saw it with the decision of Alcoa, again in my electorate, to cease smelting aluminium at its plant at Point Henry.

When these events happen, we see nothing from this government in terms of trying to deal with the economic adjustment which is required by people when major decisions of this kind are made. When Ford made its decision to stop making cars in Australia, the then Labor government acted, on that very day, to put in place a package of adjustment for both Broadmeadows and Geelong. Today, Geelong is yet to see a single dollar dedicated to it for the readjustment that needs to occur in our city by virtue of the decision that was made by Alcoa. This legislation, in relation to the shipping industry, is just another example of that.

Australia needs a shipping industry. That, more than anything else, is why I stand here today opposing this legislation. We need a shipping industry because 99 per cent of the trade back and forth between Australia and the world is done through shipping. Indeed, that shipping back and forth from Australia represents something like 10 per cent of the global trade in shipping. It is a remarkable figure and it explains how significant the shipping industry and the shipping task is in Australia and why, of course, it is so important for us to maintain a shipping industry in Australia. None of this is a surprise. We are an island nation. We have one of the longest coastlines in the world. For so many reasons—economic, environmental, security—it is important that we maintain a shipping industry, particularly in terms of coastal shipping.

Shipping as an industry was on the decline under the Howard government. In 1996, when John Howard was elected Prime Minister, there were 55 Australian flagged vessels plying their trade along the Australian coastline. By the time John Howard lost office in 2007, the number of Australian flagged vessels had been reduced to 21. When we came to office in 2007, we were faced with the task of trying to revitalise this industry that is so critical to Australia's economy and national security. Through a parliamentary inquiry in 2008 and then extensive consultation by the then Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese, we worked to the point of producing a package of reforms that were introduced in 2012—reforms which sought to bring back a shipping industry in this country and sought to plot a path for a viable shipping industry long into the future. We did that because the shipping industry mattered to us as a Labor government, as indeed the industries of this country and working Australia matter to us as Labor members in this place.

That package of reforms included such measures as tax incentives for Australian flagged vessels which also sought to provide encouragement to Australian flagged vessels to employ Australian workers. It involved the creation of a second shipping register, which provided for international carriers to and from Australia. It also sought to put in place workplace packages which focused on developing maritime skills so that we maintained the skills base for this industry, going into the future.

All of this was the result of significant consultation within this important industry. All of this was designed to ensure that we could have a viable shipping industry long into the future. But, from the moment that the coalition were elected in 2013, they set themselves against those reforms and in the process set themselves against the shipping industry and, as I said, against working Australia. We have seen this government make every effort to try and undermine the package of reforms that was put in place by the former Labor government. This bill seeks to rip the heart out of those reforms. That is why I stand here tonight opposing the bill.

This bill, to its enormous discredit, will remove the term 'revitalising Australian shipping' from the objects of Australian coastal shipping. That is an appalling and retrograde step which says everything about the intent of this legislation. It removes any preference, in any form, for Australian flagged vessels along the Australian coastline, in effect putting Australian flagged vessels on the same footing as flag-of-convenience ships that will be on our coastline.

Understanding what comes with an Australian flagged vessel is not rocket science—Australian workers on it; the money generated by that enterprise going into revenue through paying Australian tax; and, importantly, Australian industrial relations conditions persisting as the law, as it were, on such a ship. An Australian flagged vessel is required to employ people under Australian conditions of employment. All of that is placed under threat in circumstances where, by virtue of this bill, an Australian flagged vessel will be put on the same footing as a vessel with a flag of convenience—a vessel which has none of those obligations, a vessel whose enterprise will not see tax being paid into the Australian taxation system. Indeed, the economic modelling which supports this bill and talks about the savings that will come through the associated regulatory changes indicates that 88 per cent of the savings are based on the assumption that 90 per cent of Australian crews on ships doing coastal work will be replaced with crews that will be paid under terms and conditions of employment that would persist in the developing world. In our view that is an utterly unacceptable situation.

It is expected from the government's own modelling that the consequence of this bill will be the termination of employment of people earning Australian conditions of employment, Australian wages, throughout the shipping industry and particularly in places like Tasmania and particularly in the cruise ship sector in northern Australia, in places such as Cairns. As I said earlier, it is a job-destroying piece of legislation. It is an appalling piece of public policy. But it is entirely consistent with the way in which this government has gone about its business from the moment that it was elected. In essence, this legislation represents Work Choices on water. That is what we are talking about here. Right now the industry has a 10,000 strong workforce, and they are the people who will be subject to the effects of this legislation.

The logic of our position is very clear. We are simply saying that, just as Australian conditions apply to road and rail, because of course all those workplaces are in Australia, they should also apply to our blue highway, to coastal shipping, as well. This form of transport should exist on exactly the same terms, on exactly the same playing field, as road and rail. There is a logical sense to it. We would never, as a country, walk down the path of opening up those other modes of transport to the extent that developing world levels of employment existed within them. We would never think of doing that in respect of road and rail and we should not be doing it in respect of sea, and yet that is precisely what this legislation is seeking to do. That is why I stand here this evening opposing it.

Opposing this legislation does not in any way make us an outlier in terms of the accessibility of work on our coastline. Indeed, other countries around the world, for example the US and Canada, Europe and countries like Japan, all seek to regulate the shipping task on their coastline, and they do so bearing in mind that that industry carries with it a significant national interest—a significant national interest in an economic sense and in an environment and security sense as well. In many respects right now, without this legislation, without this these amendments, we already have comparatively open seas in terms of our coastal shipping task which do allow foreign flagged vessels to work along our coastline in circumstances where there is no Australian flagged vessel able to operate. The effect of this legislation, the effect of this bill, were it to be passed through this parliament, would be to see foreign flagged vessels placed on exactly the same footing as Australian flagged vessels, which would be an enormous threat to the ongoing viability of the coastal shipping industry and therefore the shipping industry in this country.

We need a local shipping industry for many reasons. We need it from an economic point of view. As I mentioned earlier, 99 per cent of trade to and from Australia is done via shipping so it is important that we retain a local shipping industry. We need to do it from an environmental point of view. It is no coincidence that most of the recent environmental disasters that we have seen around our shores have occurred by virtue of non-Australian flagged vessels—the Shen Neng in 2010 on the Barrier Reef, the Pacific Adventurer on the Sunshine Coast in 2009 and the China Steel Developer in Mackay earlier this year. All of these were non-Australian flagged vessels, and they caused significant environmental damage. So for environmental reasons it is important that we retain a local shipping industry. We need to do so for security reasons as well. Quite evidently there is a higher risk profile in respect of non-screened crews working on ships around our coastline, and it is much harder to screen crews who are on non-Australian flagged vessels. Again, that is not a particularly difficult point to make but the result of this legislation would be that our security position was reduced. Of course our Navy benefits significantly from having a strong merchant fleet participating in a strong domestic shipping industry. For all these reasons we should be opposing this bill—this bill represents a challenge to the local shipping industry.

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

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. I would like to start by commenting on a few statements made by the member for Griffith during her contribution. She said—and I think I have got this word for word—'The differences between the coalition and Labor are so stark.' She also talked about the party that stands up for Australian jobs. She said, 'Look at the track record.' That is where I will start. I am very proud to look at the track record of the coalition and that of the Labor Party when it comes to jobs.

The previous coalition government reduced the unemployment queues of this country by 300,000 people. The 300,000 people that were on the unemployment queue back in 1996 were put into employment. Those queues were 300,000 people shorter the during the Howard-Costello years. They were the years during the Asian financial crisis. Not only did that government reduce the unemployment queues by those 300,000 people; they also repaid $96 billion worth of debt that they had inherited from Labor, plus an extra $54 billion in interest that they had to take out of the economy and pay back on Labor's debt. They put the budget back into surplus and put money in the bank, and decreased the unemployment queues by 300,000.

Let's look at Labor's track record during its six years in government. During that period, the unemployment queues actually lengthened by 200,000 people. So we had a 300,000 reduction under the coalition and a 200,000 increase under the Labor Party. They ran up $300 billion worth of debt despite, at the time, having record commodity prices. Yes, we did have a GFC, but we had China going gangbusters, with record increases in our exports. Despite that, we had 200,000 fewer jobs. So I am very pleased to talk to anyone who wants to talk about the track records on employment of this coalition and of the Labor Party. Already, in the two short years that the coalition government has been in office, we have seen another 335,000 new jobs created in this economy.

So the track records make it clear. It is the coalition that stands up for job and it is the coalition that gets the economic settings of the economy right so that jobs can be created, while, on the other side, with Labor, it is all about protection, it is all about regulation, it is all about central planning. And what do we see time and time again? We see job losses. Fundamentally, the Labor Party have no understanding of how you achieve sustainable higher wages in an economy. They have no understanding of how you achieve sustainable employment growth—by freeing the hands of our small businesses and entrepreneurs to go out there and invest, innovate and take risks, and to start up new business and employ people.

When it comes to the production of goods and services in this economy, the only way we can have high wages and the only way we can have more jobs is by the production of goods and services in this economy being done as efficiently and competitively as possible. That should be the aim of all governments. Freight is a major cost component in the production of all goods. Even though any particular industry in any location can be highly efficient and highly competitive, they still have to get their inputs freighted into their plant and they have to get their final produce shipped out of their plant. So the freight costs—something they have very little control over—often have a great say in how competitive and how efficient that business can be.

As a nation we have many natural resources. We are blessed with that black coal seam that runs down our eastern seaboard. We are blessed with the gold, iron ore, lead, zinc, uranium, silver and nickel in our outback. We are blessed with natural gas. We are blessed with forests. We are blessed with a wonderful system of government—our Westminster system—and our Constitution. We are blessed with an educated population. But the one disadvantage that we have is the tyranny of distance. Yes, as Geoffrey Blainey argued, that tyranny of distance has helped us. It has helped drive innovation. It has helped create for us a nation of rugged individualists. But the tyranny of distance when it comes to freight and goods is the major disadvantage that we have in our economy. Other than the Antarctic, being the least populated continent in the world, for us the cost of freight as a result of that tyranny of distance is one of the major obstacles that our businesses that produce goods have to overcome. I would suggest that there is nowhere else in the world, no other nation anywhere else in the world, where it is more important to have an efficient and competitive transport system. That transport system is made up, of course, of sea freight but also road, rail and air freight. Often, they all combine—which I will come to in a minute. If we have an inefficient system, if we have an uncompetitive transport sector, it will cost jobs, it will destroy wealth and it will make us all poorer as a nation.

So where are we with coastal sea freight in this country? We have coastal sea freight that is in long-term decline. We no longer really ship goods from Sydney to Melbourne by sea. That is not necessary. We have great infrastructure with the Hume Highway. A truck can load up in a warehouse or a factory in Sydney, be about 10 hours on the road and get to Melbourne overnight. We can do the same from Sydney to Brisbane. We have a reasonably efficient road network. Yes, our Pacific Highway does need more work. But our road system from Sydney to Melbourne is actually of an excellent standard. We need to fix up those patches on the Pacific Highway so that we have the same standard going north to Brisbane as we do going south to Melbourne. But our sea freight, our coastal shipping, is in long-term decline. Just look at some of the numbers. In 1996, the fleet of major Australian registered ships numbered 75. By 2005-06, that had gone down to 46. In 2006-07, it was down to just 13. In 2013-14, it had declined to just 15. It is a declining industry. Those 15 ships that are left are ageing, they are less efficient, and they are inefficient when it comes to fuel and staffing. The ships cannot compete with modern vessels—with those ships having an average age of 23. So, that long-term decline is continuing.

We saw that decline continue under the policies of the former Labor government. Since Labor brought in their grand plan for the so-called revitalisation of coastal shipping, we have seen a 63 per cent reduction in deadweight tonnage of major Australian flagged vessels. That is from 2011-12 to 2013-14—a decline of 63 per cent. We have seen the paperwork and the bureaucratic system they have put onto industry—about a thousand extra hours in administration per year with red tape. We have seen the number of ships on the Australian transitional general licence drop from 16 to just eight. Overall, from the year 2000 to the year 2012, shipping's share of Australia's total freight task fell from 27 per cent to under 17 per cent.

We are looking at an industry where jobs are in decline and have been in decline for a long time, and that is the Australian coastal shipping industry. The fact that we have an inefficient coastal shipping industry has other effects throughout the economy which cause job losses. The problem is that it is cheaper for a company in Brisbane to import raw product from anywhere in South-East Asia and ship it into Brisbane than it is to ship it around from Adelaide to Brisbane. Having a highly regulated and highly protected Australian shipping industry costs Australian jobs. It does not protect jobs or save jobs; it actually costs jobs in the economy. It makes us as a nation less efficient and it makes us less wealthy overall. That is what this bill addresses. Yes, there will potentially be some adverse small effects to the Australian shipping industry, but it is an industry already in decline. We should not be protecting industries that are in decline, because by doing so we harm the rest of the economy. There are so many industry-wide benefits to this bill that will help our resources, cement, aluminium, fertiliser, petroleum, sugar, grain and many other products which use coastal shipping.

I have come across a few interesting quotes on the proposed changes. I have one here from a company called Gypsum Resources Australia from one of their submissions. They say that their

competitiveness in the Australian gypsum market is largely dependent on the competitiveness of its coastal shipping services. If GRA is competitive in sea freight then it is likely to win the business. Whilst GRA's FOB [free on board] costs

that means the cost ex-factory—

and associated pricing is competitive with its [overseas] competitors it has often been unable to compete in the Australian domestic gypsum market due to the uncompetitive GL [general licence] shipping rates which it is required to use under the current Act.

They gave an example. In 2014 they applied for but were denied a temporary licence and that stopped them winning a contract to supply gypsum into Brisbane. They said denial of the licence rendered their tender uncompetitive and most customers were lost to a company from Thailand. There were job losses. They were jobs that should have and could have been done in Australia and it would have been the most efficient way to do it, but, because our costal shipping line was uncompetitive, we lost jobs. There were no jobs in the shipping industry, because no freight was moved—the product came from Thailand rather than Adelaide—and there were no jobs in the Adelaide factory.

It is easy to see how this current legislation, which needs to be fixed and which we are changing, actually costs jobs. I have another quote—this time from Cristal Mining:

We need to stop insisting on a highly regulated, costly and inefficient protectionist environment to attempt to preserve a declining coastal shipping industry because all other Australian industries dependent on coastal freight up being disadvantaged.

The last 30 years of review demonstrate the objective of a viable and sustainable Australian flaked coastal shipping fleet is receding ever further into the distance. That objective although nationally reassuring should not be placed ahead of the economic viability of many other Australian businesses that depend on reasonable cost coastal shipping options. The jobs of a very small number in the maritime sector cannot artificially be made more valuable than those of thousands in the transnational value-adding industries.

…      …   …

The Act, in its current form, puts Australian industry at risk of operational shutdowns and possible job losses.

That spells it all out.

That is why we see the opposition from the Labor Party on this bill. All they are interested in doing is protecting a few of their mates in the maritime union while at the same time sacrificing thousands and thousands of jobs in other sectors of the economy. This is why under Labor jobs are always lost, while under the coalition jobs are created. We govern for the good of the country and the good of the economy. We are prepared to come in here and make hard decisions, rather than fall back on scare campaigns or protect our mates in the unions. I oppose this amendment and I commend this bill to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me no pleasure to stand here and speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015. I support the second reading amendment wholeheartedly. The former Prime Minister—the former Prime Minister Abbott, that is—said that Work Choices was 'dead, buried and cremated', and I think there were a few stunts to underline that effect. But what we see today is life being breathed back into Work Choices. This is Work Choices on water, as it has been dubbed, and there are pretty good reasons for that. It is called Work Choices on water because this legislation will see the wholesale sacking of an Australian maritime workforce, the driving down of wages and the removal of people who are enjoying Australian wages and conditions and being replaced with foreign workers.

Not since the Peter Reith and John Howard-led Patrick waterfront dispute have we seen such an attack on waterfront workers, on seafarers, on the maritime industry in this country. At least then they had the courage to do it in broad daylight—there were balaclavas and dogs. They are not as visible this time but there are plenty of balaclavas and dogs in the legislation.

Member for Hughes, it was George Bernard Shaw who said, 'The government that tries to rob Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul.' Well, the champion for Paul is at the back of the chamber. What he is proposing to do is rob a group of workers to support the profits of the companies that he supports. I argue, and all those on this side of the House argue, that Australia is a better country than that. If we want to improve our productivity, there is a better way of going about it. We made some decisions back in the 1980s that we did not want to be a low-wage, low-productivity country, that we wanted to have good and decent jobs and high productivity. The productivity improvements enhancements we have seen on the waterfront and on the waterside have gone through the roof, through cooperation—

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

Isn't it interesting how empty tins always make the most noise.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Throsby has the call.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the member for Hughes wants to learn something, he will find it a lot easier to learn something with his mouth closed. What I hope to do is paint the problems with this legislation.

I am not surprised that there have not been too many National Party speakers on this bill, because they would be ashamed to do it. We all remember November 2013, a few months after the election, where the National Party went to the wall. They went to the wall, in the name of the national interest, to prevent a company—a US backed company by the name of Archer Daniels Midland—from purchasing a controlling interest in GrainCorp. Their concern back then was to ensure that the national interest was protected. They did not want to see a foreign company come in and have a controlling interest in GrainCorp.

Where are those National Party members today? They managed to bust the former Treasurer's arm and roll him, because they thought it was not in the national interest to have a US backed multinational company running GrainCorp, a critical piece of infrastructure loading grain onto ships. But somehow it is in the national interest to have every single Australian worker—

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

sacked from the ships that they are loading grain onto so that not only will you not have an Australian ship; you will not have an Australian maritime worker working on those ships. Somehow that is in the national interest. Is it any wonder that members of the National Party have not been speaking on this bill? They are too ashamed to do it, because people like me will be calling them out for their hypocrisy.

This legislation is not in the national interest. If it is allowed to pass, it will allow those foreign flagged vessels working between Australian domestic ports for up to 183 days a year to do so by paying Third World wages to their crew. Meanwhile, Australian shipping companies, who are trying to do the right thing and pay Australian-level wages, will be forced out of business—and somehow that is in Australia's national interest. We on this side of the House argue that it is not.

Mariners will be out of work. Unlike the member for Hughes, who has an academic interest in this issue, I come from a region with a port, where hundreds of families rely on wages from Australian seafaring. They are the workers who are going to be thrown out of work. The men and women who put out of Port Kembla on a weekly basis are the people who are going to lose their jobs, because the champions over there for Work Choices on water could not give two hoots about those families.

Those opposite talk about unemployment and they talk about employment. If this bill is about improving employment in this country, it is a very strange way to go about it, seeing hundreds of workers thrown out of their jobs in the name of creating employment. Their track record is not too good on this. This is a government which has seen unemployment grow to its highest level in over a decade. It now has a '6' in front of it. When they came into government, we bequeathed them an unemployment rate with a '5' in front of it, so they have a pretty atrocious track record on this measure.

This legislation is Liberal Party DNA in action. This is their ideological commitment to Work Choices—to destroying Australian jobs and destroying Australian wages and conditions. This is what it is all about. It is a typical ideological agenda from the coalition. They have never seen an Australian worker that they thought was not earning too much. They want to see the cutting of wages and conditions for Australians working on our ships—

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting—

Here is the proof of the pudding. The bellicose member for Hughes up the back, with his academic interest in this issue, gave us a few examples. He did not cite the examples which were brought up in the Senate inquiry into this bill, not a few weeks ago, where we heard evidence that the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development—the minister's own department—has been advising Australian shipping companies that, to compete in Australia under the proposed legislation, they should drop the Australian flag and register overseas. Not only that, they were advised to sack their Australian workers and replace them with crews paying foreign wages. That is their solution. That is not fantasy. That is the evidence—not rebutted—that was presented before the Senate inquiry into this legislation not two months ago. I thought that with the change in prime ministership there might have been a change of heart and a change of policy, but what we are seeing from Abbott to Turnbull is a consistency of policy. There has been no change. If there had been a change in policy, we would not be seeing this legislation before the parliament.

Under Labor, through the Australian shipping reform package of legislation, we saw policies put in place that were going to rescue the Australian shipping industry, because it was in a pretty parlous state. During the Howard years the number of Australian flagged vessels working our trade routes domestically went from 55 in 1996 to 21 by the end of the reign of John Howard as Prime Minister. We revitalised the entire industry. I will just repeat those numbers, for the education of the member for Hughes: they dropped from 55 in 1996 to 21—slashed by more than a half over their period in government. And they are at it again.

There will not be an Australian flagged ship. That will be the result. But be very, very clear about this: there will not be an Australian flagged vessel, with Australian workers, working our coastal shipping industry if this legislation passes through the Senate. They know about it. They have to be honest about it. They have to be honest in saying, 'This is what we stand for.' In fact, I want to see them. I invite the member for Hughes to come down to Port Kembla, in my electorate, and say: 'I am campaigning to have you guys lose your jobs, because that is what I stand for. I am campaigning to have all of you and your families thrown out of work'—because, make no mistake about it, that is what this legislation means to workers in my electorate.

The changes proposed in this bill will put at risk the jobs of about 2,000 Australian seafarers. More than that, about 8,000 jobs in associated sectors are also at risk. But it is not just the jobs and the economic impacts—and the economic impacts are significant. We are a nation that relies on seafaring for our trade. Most of the goods that we export from this country—and we are an exporting country, committed to trade—are shipped out of our ports on our ships. Many countries in the world would not allow even the situations that we have in Australia at the moment. In the United States of America, for example, under the—prodigiously named!—Jones Act, foreign ships and foreign crews are banned from working in their coastal waters. That is, if you want to ply trade up and down the American coastline you have to do it on American made ships crewed by American workers. They would be looking aghast at the sorts of legislation this government is proposing to put in place today.

In Canada, in Japan and throughout the European Union we see similar sorts of situations. So, we in the Australian Labor Party are not alone in calling rubbish on the bill before the House today, and that is what we are doing. We are calling rubbish. We are saying that this bill is designed to do nothing more than put 2,000 people out of work. It is not just about the jobs and not just about the economic impact; it is about the environmental impact as well.

We have seen numerous examples over the past few decades of incidents when foreign flagged ships, foreign crewed ships that do not know our coastal waters and perhaps do not conform to the same safety standards and risk-management practices that ours do, doing all sorts of things that have put our environment at risk. We saw in 2010 an oil spill that occurred—up your way, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta—when the Chinese bulk coal carrier the MV Shen Neng ran aground on the reef near Rockhampton. It was found that this ship was over 10 kilometres outside the designated shipping lane. It created a massive oil slick, one of the biggest scars in the reef, off Rockhampton, around 250 metres wide and three kilometres long. Coral bleaching has nothing on the impact of this ship and the impact it could have had on the reef on that terrible day. It was a massive oil slick. Thankfully we were able to clean it up. But this is an example of the sort of environmental risk we face if this legislation passes the House.

We know from talking to seafarers and from the examples that have come before the regulatory authorities that many vessels are taking shortcuts, doing 'rat runs' and not adhering to environmental or occupational health and safety standards, and this is the sort of thing that is going to be let loose by this government and these members who are shortly going to vote in favour of this legislation. It will see not only 2,000 workers thrown out of their jobs, including the workers who ply the coastal shipping routes out of Port Kembla, in my electorate, and not only the economic damage that will be done by destroying the Australian shipping industry but also the environmental damage that will be done as a result of the lack of standards and regulation that this legislation is going to wreak upon the Australian community.

So, this bill should be rejected. It should be withdrawn from the Notice Paper. And, if it is not, those members on the other side should do the right thing and vote with the Labor opposition to ensure that this bill never becomes law.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise in opposition to the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, and I am particularly pleased to have been in the chamber for the contribution of my friend the member for Throsby, who touched on a number of very concerning aspects of the bill, not least of which are the environmental risks it presents to Australia and our maritime waters. In joining my colleagues in opposition to this legislation I should make it clear that I am speaking also in support of the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler. I think it is worth touching on that amendment, because it clearly sets out the principles with which we should be approaching this challenge that is before us, in particular noting the very concerning evidence recently given before the Senate inquiry about the engagement of departmental officials in relation to the issue that has had some prominence—the advice given to Mr Milby at North Star Cruises that for his company to compete in Australia under the proposed legislation, the bill we are debating this evening, he should reflag to a foreign state, sack his Australian crew and hire a crew on cheap foreign wages. In light of this as well as other matters, we should be declining to give the bill a second reading.

But the amendment obviously goes further than this and sets out the principles that Labor used to inform our approach to this challenge in the 2012 legislation, working towards the objective of ensuring that this critical Australian industry can operate on a level playing field with foreign competitors and ensuring that our economic, our environmental and our security interests in fostering the local shipping industry are maintained and indeed, where possible, advanced. These are the objectives that we should be concentrating on and, measured against those objectives, as well as the concerning evidence before the Senate inquiry, this bill fails and should be rejected.

It is very interesting, as we navigate our passage from the Abbott government to the Turnbull government, to consider how changes in rhetoric and changes in style appear to be entirely unmatched when it comes to questions of substance. Our new Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, has spoken with evident joy of the exciting times in which we—or perhaps he—lives. He has also spoken about improving the quality of policy debate in this place. I wonder if the member for Hughes got that memo, based on his contribution both on the bill and throughout the contribution of the member for Throsby. But I am rather more concerned that the responsible minister for this legislation, the Deputy Prime Minister, seems to have failed to have done so. Whatever the new Prime Minister has said, it appears that his government, like that of Mr Abbott, is bereft of ideas. Its rhetoric, evidenced in this legislation, is completely empty. For this government it seems clear that dismantling the work of Labor governments is as good as it gets, and they never fail to descend to the lowest common denominator. Their answer to everything seems to be reducing labour costs and reducing wages. That is their only solution to every problem.

I looked with some care at the second reading speech of Minister Truss, a second reading contribution that I think can at best be regarded as disingenuous, with the meaningless language of reform and three-word slogans that I thought we had got rid of—the same tired old slogans. When we talk about reducing costs in this bill, we know that those cost reductions are almost entirely, on the government's own evidence, to be found through slashing wages. So we see, in the language of the Deputy Prime Minister, that the government has declared that 'Australia is open for business and these reforms will help reduce the burden on business, open up new opportunities and unlock the potential of our coastal trading routes'. This is a bold claim that is not supported by the government's own material and has scant regard for the human beings, the 10,000 people, directly and indirectly employed in Australia in this industry. Much like the legislation at large, it is also a claim that is not informed by evidence or engaged by any sense of the national interest, whether broadly described, as the member for Grayndler has put it in his amendment, or even more narrowly. It is not concerned about jobs for Australians or security, much less our precious natural environment.

It is also inconsistent with international approaches. The member for Throsby touched on this in looking at a range of comparable nations which have policy objectives very similar to those set out in the legislation that is presently afoot, the 2012 Labor legislation, and very similar approaches to safeguarding their national interests through giving support to domestic shipping industries. These nations include Canada, the European Union and the United States—that market bastion, that example to which we are often taken to by members of this government. New Zealand is another generally favoured example, along with Japan. These regimes are broadly similar in their objectives and also in some of the mechanisms through which those objectives are sought to be given effect to. The system this government proposes will dismantle our shipping industry at cost to Australian industry, at cost to Australian jobs and at risk to Australia's security and at risk to Australia's natural environment. It raises a range of other questions around the so-called change of attitude under the new Prime Minister, particularly as it goes to the wider responsibilities of this minister. I see we have the newly promoted, if I may describe it in those terms, minister for cities at the table, the member for Mayo. I was very pleased to see that portfolio recognised in this government. Hopefully it will assume some of the great Labor legacy in supporting our cities and suburbs through the actions of national government. Again it appears that the comments of the Prime Minister in this regard have not always been echoed by the minister responsible for infrastructure, an issue that is at play here.

But turning back to this bill, it contains three major elements, all of which are deeply problematic. Firstly, and this appears to be its principal concern, it repeals the 2012 reforms implemented by Labor, a broad-based, considered package of reforms aimed at boosting Australian industry. They are a package of reforms that at the very least deserve time to be considered to see how they have fared, particularly as the evidence—such as it is, and recognising that some of the decisions that industry participants make in deals like this take some time to wash through—indicates that these reforms are serving their purpose.

Secondly, the bill would deregulate Australian coastal shipping. Again, as I touched upon earlier, this is a deregulatory agenda that is significantly out of step with those of many comparable nations. In doing so, it would establish a single permit system and expand significantly exemptions from our wage standards applicable here. And, lastly, building on this point: this bill would impose Work Choices on water through extending the non-application of the Fair Work Act. The extent to which the government has sought to render invisible the workers engaged directly and indirectly in this industry, as well as their families, in this debate is extraordinary. They should be heard, and their concerns should be considered as the parliament considers this legislation. I note that the explanatory memorandum suggests that there would be nil financial impact in this regard, but this ignores the direct and indirect impact of these lost jobs, these 2,000 lost jobs—more than the 1,000 on the government's own evidence. I think a larger number is more likely to be borne out. It will particularly impact communities through lost jobs and damage to families. It will impact on the Commonwealth through the social security system as well as less tangible costs. As I started to mention earlier, I think of the impact on particular regional communities, and it will be more significant in places like ports in Tasmania and places like Cairns.

This is legislation that deserves to be rejected by this House and to not proceed through to enactment. We should think about the broader context of shipping to Australia as this parliament has been consumed with important debates about trade, our opportunities in that regard and some of the challenges it poses to us and to Australian businesses. As we are an island nation, shipping is, of course, especially important to Australia. It is how our goods get to market in the rest of the world. It is also an industry that presently employs, directly and indirectly, around 10,000 people. This bill denies those workers a level playing field. It denies the businesses that employ those workers a fair chance to continue to compete.

I want to go to the first component of this bill: the dismantling of the architecture of Labor's 2012 reforms. The Labor government took very seriously the challenges facing shipping. Labor continues to do so now. On this point, let me turn to the pettiness of this government's approach. We see the extent to which the bill before the House narrows the scope of our engagement, narrows the scope of this parliament's vision for the Australian shipping industry. We see a bill that moves away from any commitment to revitalising Australian industry and that dramatically narrows the scope of the legislation.

Labor, on the other hand, took a broader view built around looking to ensure a level playing field for the domestic shipping sector and fair access to this market for Australian businesses. This was a considered look informed by evidence. There was a parliamentary inquiry from 2008—a unanimous parliamentary inquiry, I might add—exhaustive stakeholder engagement in the following years and a real plan, not blind faith in ideology. We saw a series of thoughtful and considered measures to put in place that level playing field, including taxation incentives and an innovative look at the coastal shipping regime. We saw the shipping register. We saw the workers involved in this industry, through the Maritime Workforce Development Forum, looking to skills development to safeguard jobs for the future. We saw the legislation that took up all those elements of the national interest, those three principles of supporting our economic development, protecting our environment and ensuring, where possible, national security.

This considered approach deserves time to see how it is going. As I touched on earlier, key decisions and key investments are not made overnight. This is particularly so when there is evidence that has been produced to the processes of this parliament that the new arrangements are working. The case for change is not founded on evidence. It is not founded on reality. It is founded on ideology.

I turn now to the deregulation aspect of this bill. Again, it is blind faith. When we consider the references to red tape, we see echoes in the deflating balloon that is the government's red-tape repeal legislation at large as ever more grandiose claims are unsupported by any evidence in the real world. I note again that 88 per cent of the claimed economic benefits to flow from this legislation are said to come from reduced labour costs. This is from the explanatory memorandum. When we consider the regulatory impact statement and the cost-benefit analysis, there is very little in them to commend them. According to the Australia Institute, in the deregulatory benefits we are looking at numbers of much less than one per cent of the industry's turnover.

Again we see a narrow and ideological approach to the assessment that ignores the reality of the challenges facing these industries in a narrow, economic sense—leaving aside those wider aspects of the national interest challenge. We see significant job losses—very significant job losses of good, high-wage jobs—for very little economic benefit, if there is any at all. We also see in this bill more than simply an approach which is heedless of workers and their families' concerns. It is an approach which is deeply concerning, consistent with the evidence, the shocking revelations, about the advice given by departmental officials to businesses, heedless of Australian values, heedless of the concerns of Australian workers.

As the member for Grayndler said in his speech in this second reading debate, our approach to the issues of industrial relations here and elsewhere in the transport and logistics industry in Australia should be very simple: if you work in Australia, you should be paid in accordance with Australian law. You should also be entitled to the benefits of the other conditions that Australian law affords Australian workers. It is deeply concerning that this bill plans to alter the workplace relations environment so that only a very limited number of seafarers would be covered by the Fair Work Act. It also removes the requirements around collective agreements being registered.

This is an approach that, again, is not consistent with that of comparable nations. It is consistent with a blind, reflexive hatred of unionism, a lack of concern for workers and a view about productivity that is all about a race to the bottom in circumstances where we know that labour productivity is not the problem in the Australian economy. Labour productivity is doing okay. Wage growth, on the other hand, is not. For these reasons and so many more we must reject Work Choices on water. We must look at an approach to this legislation which deals squarely with all the dimensions of the national interest. We must continue to follow the Labor approach and reject the bill that is before the House.

Debate adjourned.