Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Shipping services are vitally important to Australia and the wellbeing of our economy. Australia is the fifth largest user of shipping services in the world. Ten per cent of the world's sea trade passes through Australian ports, with international shipping carrying over 99 per cent of Australia's imports and exports by volume. A critical component of Australia's domestic freight task, around 15 per cent, is also carried by coastal shipping.

The environmentally safe use of the seas, including in Australian waters, by that large shipping task is equally important to Australians. We take our responsibilities for safety and environment protection in maritime very seriously.

Over time, the global shipping standards-setting body, the International Maritime Organization, has progressively improved marine environment pollution standards for ships through the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships and the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-Fouling Systems on Ships, amongst others.

As Australia is a signatory to both these conventions, we have an obligation to bring our domestic maritime environment protection legislation up to date with globally agreed amendments.

Our domestic implementation of international marine environment protection regulations demonstrates our longstanding commitment to the protection of the marine environment and our active participation in the IMO as the means to achieve that protection.

As an IMO Council member, Australia plays a leadership role in supporting environmentally sound regulations that minimise the associated burden on industry.

The bill before the House will implement three main amendments to the international maritime conventions.

Firstly, it will introduce controls for ship discharges that are known as 'persistent floaters'—substances that can form surface slicks on water, such as some grades of vegetable oil or paraffin-like substances.

These controls, which include cargo tank cleaning, pre-wash and discharge procedures, apply in certain environmentally sensitive areas in Europe, specifically in north-west European waters, the Baltic Sea, western European waters and the Norwegian Sea.

Secondly, the bill will ban the use, and carriage for use, of heavy fuel oil by ships in Arctic waters from 1 July 2024. This mirrors the ban already in place on the use of heavy fuel oil by ships in the Antarctic.

Thirdly, from 1 January 2023, the bill will ban ships from applying anti-fouling systems that contain the chemical biocide cybutryne, which is highly toxic to marine organisms.

The bill will implement these marine environment protection measures by amending:

The bill also includes some minor editorial changes to replace 'orders' with 'marine orders' in both acts to be consistent with the Navigation Act 2012.

It is important to understand that an Australian-flagged ship is an Australian workplace and, therefore, subject to Australian legislation wherever it is in the world.

These amendments are not expected to have any significant impacts on the Australian maritime industry. Currently Australian-flagged ships that undertake international voyages are unlikely to operate in north European and Arctic waters. However, should they do so, they will be treated the same as any other vessel operating in those areas of the world.

The inclusion of cybutryne as a harmful anti-fouling substance has a transition period consistent with a ship's normal dry-docking cycle for inspections and cleaning. Hence, owners will not incur additional costs from having to take their ships out of service sooner than usual.

Furthermore, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has never registered cybutryne or approved its use as an anti-fouling agent for ships in Australia, so relevant Australian industries will not lose business.

The Australian government is committed to protecting our maritime environment from ship pollution.

By strengthening these provisions to reduce pollution from ships and protect the marine environment, we will all benefit from a cleaner ocean, particularly those communities that rely on a healthy ocean for their livelihood and wellbeing.

I commend the bill to the House.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin, I acknowledge the member for Spence, a former seafarer, given that we are addressing the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. The coalition, as does the government, takes Australia's international obligations to protect the marine environment from pollution from ships seriously. The bill aligns Australia's domestic legislation with Australia's international obligations that will support effective and consistent global regulations to protect the marine environment regarding pollution from ships. The International Maritime Organization progressively improves maritime environment pollution standards for ships, and this bill aligns Australia with recent changes to international regulations.

The bill aims to do three things. Firstly, the bill introduces a control for discharges of residues of noxious liquid substances known as persistent floaters—substances like certain grades of vegetable oil or paraffin-like substances that can form surface slicks. Ships will be required to meet new cargo tank cleaning, pre-wash and discharge procedures for persistent floaters. The new regulation applies to northern European waters and comes into effect on 1 January 2023. It specifically applies to north-west European waters, the Baltic Sea, western European waters and the Norwegian Sea.

Secondly, the bill bans the use of heavy fuel oils, or HFOs, by ships in Arctic waters from 1 July 2024. A similar plan already is in place for the Antarctic. The ban aims to reduce environmental impacts on sensitive Arctic environments caused by higher emissions of harmful air pollutants from ships burning HFO. The heavy fuel oil ban also reduces the risk of oil spills.

Thirdly, the bill extends controls on ships' harmful antifouling systems to include the chemical biocide cybutryne from 1 January 2023. This chemical is chronically toxic for marine organisms. According to the APVMA, the use of cybutryne as an antifouling agent has never been registered or approved for use by ships in Australia.

This bill brings Australia's regulations in line with the international standards setting body, the International Maritime Organization, which seeks to improve marine environment pollution standards via the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships 1973 and the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems on Ships 2001. While Australian ships are subject to Australian legislation wherever they are in the world, this legislation is not expected to have any significant impacts on the Australian maritime industry. The Australian shipping industry has been consulted on the legislation and is supportive of the alignment of regulations with the international body.

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has also considered the amendments to MARPOL relating to the cargo residues and tank washing of persistent floating products, to the prohibition on the use and carriage of HFO in Arctic waters and to the HAFS convention relating to the controls of cybutryne. The committee supported the amendments and agreed that binding treaty action could be taken. As such, the opposition will be supporting this bill.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to give my support to the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, after receiving it from the other place. The passage of this legislation may not make it to the front pages of the national broadsheets, but I don't want to be too needlessly pessimistic. Bipartisanship rarely attracts that level of attention.

Despite this fact, this bill is important. It is deserving of our time to consider it, as I'm sure we all have while waiting to see if or when the House would receive this bill. It's also worthy of support from across this chamber, and we are closing in on doing just that today. It's importance—the need to maintain and look after our oceans—makes perfect sense; as a nation, we are girt by sea.

As those who were present for my first speech would know, I was—a number of years ago—a seafarer out on open waters before continuing my career's journey to election to this place. It is due to this time at sea that I feel especially responsible to ensure that everyone is doing their bit to look after the sea that looks after you. Out there, though, that phrase doesn't always ring as true as you'd like it to.

This bill brings us in line with our international obligations, which is something that Australia should be taking seriously, to show that we are leaders in this area and model international citizens. Further to that, this takes us one step forward in demonstrating to the world that we take our marine environment seriously and we take the world's marine environment seriously. I'd also like to note the candour of Senator Bragg during the debate in the other place. We've not been early movers in fulfilling our international environmental obligations for quite some time. These obligations are taken seriously by the Albanese Labor government.

This bill amends the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983 and the Protection of the Sea (Harmful Anti-fouling Systems) Act 2006 to ensure that Australia is meeting what it has committed to do in line with the International Maritime Organization and its conventions, of which we are a signatory. The first of these international maritime conventions is, namely, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, also known as MARPOL. Those that deal with the subject matter on a more regular basis, or if you've been on my staff listening to me talking about the issue passionately over the last couple of weeks, will know Australia is in, in fact, a founding member of the International Maritime Organization, which is a specialised agency of the United Nations. The second of these conventions is the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems in Ships.

Particularly the amendments to the convention on harmful anti-fouling systems on ships outlaw the use of the toxic chemical cybutryne, a substance that my staff in their research discovered is definitely not the home world of the Transformers, which is of course Cybertron! However, their research also uncovered that this substance, according to the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, has never been registered or approved for use as an anti-fouling agent for ships in Australia. Anti-fouling agents such as cybutryne are often applied to the hulls of ships to prevent molluscs, barnacles and the like from attaching themselves to those hulls. Whilst it's true the aims of these chemicals are to increase fuel efficiency and improve the performance of vessels, it is the case with these particular substances that the risk of damaging the marine environment and other marine life in the process is unacceptably high. I look forward to these chemicals being phased out in the not-too-distant future. We may not utilise them here, but we must show that we are acting on these changes to the convention so that other countries may follow suit.

The bill also aims to limit the discharge of what are known as persistent floaters. For those of us unfamiliar with the terminology, it refers to slick-forming substances. Certain grades of vegetable oils and paraffin are examples of that. The reason why they are called 'persistent floaters' is that in the event of a discharge or spill into the ocean they can mix with other materials, such as plastic debris, to form a floating crust on the water or sink to later be washed ashore to cause more damage to the environment that has been unfortunate enough to find itself in their path. By strengthening any provision out there that protects our marine environment we will all benefit from a cleaner ocean. This is also achieved by more countries doing the same by ratifying these conventions into their domestic laws in the same way that we are doing here today.

We all share custodianship of the ocean. The oceans, after all, do not exist solely for the purpose of trade, cargo and shipping goods across the continents. The oceans also provide a rich canvas for: scientific research; fishing stocks, which provide a cheap, stable form of protein for many across the globe; and tourism, an industry that is worth billions to Australia each year alone.

Some stretches of the ocean that are intended to be included in this bill are the pristine waters of the Arctic. We can only hope that they remain this way, and this legislation will help to ensure that. It will do this by banning the use of heavy fuel oils across these waters after 1 July 2024. A similar ban has been in place throughout Antarctic waters since 2011. It is about time we ban heavy fuel oils along both the waters surrounding our north and south poles. That's as it should be. These fuels pose such a significant threat to the marine environment, sticking to surfaces like sea ice or wildlife in the event of a spill.

I also note that the shipping industry has been aware of these amendments in advance through negotiations at the International Maritime Organization in order to develop these new controls to prevention pollution from ships. In fact, the exposure draft of this bill was published on the website of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts on 24 August 2022. Ultimately, the exposure draft was met with no strident opposition, just a willingness to engage and see that we are falling into line, effectively, with the vast majority of the world that are signatories to the treaty. If the altruistic urge to preserve our environment was not going to garner the requisite support, I think those reasons above will go a long way towards winning hearts and minds.

I would also like to thank the previous speaker, the member for Barker, for his contribution—from one South Australian in this place to another. We can achieve great things when in lockstep, and, in that spirit, I thank those senators for their contributions to this debate in the other place on Thursday. For these reasons, I am pleased to commend this bill to the House, and I hope it receives support from all sides of this chamber.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by thanking the two members for their contributions on the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, the member for Barker and the member for Spence, and particularly the member for Spence for his long contribution to the maritime industry. The Australian government is committed to best-practice maritime environmental protection. This bill will bring Australia's maritime legislation in line with the latest globally agreed amendments to international maritime conventions that Australia is a party to. The bill will: further strengthen our marine environment protections by introducing, as I said before, provisions to control the discharge of noxious liquid substances known as persistent floaters in certain European waters that come into force on 1 January 2021; extend the current ban on the use of heavy fuel oil by ships in the Antarctic to encompass Arctic waters from 1 July 2024; and ban the use of ship antifouling systems containing the toxic chemical biocide cybutryne from 1 January 2023.

By legislating these environmental controls, Australia will uphold our longstanding international reputation for promoting safe and clean shipping operations, and we will be ensuring that international standards to reduce ship pollution and protect the marine environment are being implemented consistently across the globe. The Albanese government remains committed to ensuring Australia's maritime regulatory framework remains up to date and fit for purpose to support a healthy ocean, to protect our coastal communities and to promote sustainable trade. I commend the bill to the House.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, I put the question that this bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.