Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

The Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Security Plans and Other Measures) Bill 2006 amends the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Act 2003. The amending legislation seeks to simplify the procedures for making changes to maritime ship and offshore facility security plans. It also seeks to clarify measures relating to the plan approval process, to make a number of technical amendments to clarify the intent of the act, to make amendments to various acts consequential to the enactment of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 and to make a technical amendment to the Customs Act 1901. There are three schedules to the amendment bill and schedule 1 deals directly with the act.

The main purpose of the amending legislation is to require various ships, ports and offshore facilities to have security plans in place to minimise the danger to them and Australia as a result of terrorism and other acts of violence. Maritime security plans identify security measures to be implemented when different maritime security levels are in force. A maritime security plan means a plan prepared for the purposes of part 3 of the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Act 2003. Such plans must be approved by the Secretary of the Department of Transport and Regional Services.

An example of the changes to the process of the approval of security plans is that the secretary will now have 60 days to approve a security plan, instead of the current 90 days. However, the secretary will effectively be able to extend this time by a maximum of 145 days when additional information is required in order to make a decision on a security plan. That matter is detailed in the explanatory memorandum on page 1.

Item 1 of the tabled amendments involves the repeal of current section 47(1)(c) of the act. That section requires that maritime security plans include contact details for a responsible maritime security officer. The substitute wording for section 47(1)(c) requires a participant to designate, by name or position, all of the security officers responsible for implementation of a maritime security plan. That is detailed in the explanatory memorandum on page 4. In some respects, that is an improvement. Labor understands that designated security officers may depart employment or be moved to other positions. This amendment allows flexibility by designating a position rather than an individual name, although the ability to identify a responsible person rather than a position may no longer be available because of the discretion to supply the name of a person or a designated position.

It is the opposition’s view that this bill has a tendency to validly upgrade security, but there are still many serious maritime security issues that urgently need attention. Labor has warned the government about the dangers of ammonium nitrate being freighted around our coastline by foreign flag vessels with foreign crews—crews that have not undergone a background check. As Labor understands it, the crews of foreign flag vessels need to be identified by name prior to arrival in Australia, but that is only a name and does not entail a background security check. Labor is concerned about these arrangements, particularly in relation to the carriage of ammonium nitrate as this chemical compound is a high-end explosive when mixed with fuel.

I will give an example to demonstrate the sort of damage that this can cause. When the French freighter Grandcamp, carrying 2,300 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, docked in Texas City in Texas in the United States on 16 April 1947, what happened next showed how serious an explosion of that substance can be. When the deck of the Grandcamp caught fire, the ammonium nitrate cargo exploded. The explosion, I am told, was heard as far as away as 150 miles. It produced a mushroom cloud, rising 2,000 feet. Locals thought it was a nuclear explosion. The Grandcamp’s 1.5-tonne anchor was flung two miles and was embedded 10 feet into the ground. Senators would not be surprised to learn that Texas City was devastated and the explosion killed 567 people.

In our view, it is irresponsible that the government, having been warned about this danger, has refused to deal with this danger immediately. Labor has also pointed out that Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiah have the skills and opportunities to launch a maritime terrorist attack. Reports from United States intelligence sources indicate that the al-Qaeda group is suspected of owning or having long-term charters on a fleet of between 15 and 18 bulk or general cargo vessels. While it is believed that these vessels are used to generate revenue and to support the group’s logistics network, it is feasible that one of these vessels could be used in a suicide mission, making use of an explosive such as ammonium nitrate. There is, in our view, a real threat of such a ship being used as a weapon in a terrorist strike, just as jet aircraft were used in the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks, the anniversary of which we have just seen pass.

A maritime vessel can be used against a population centre adjacent to port facilities and/or shipping channels to damage port facilities, to sink vessels or just that particular vessel and to block access to a port facility. Labor has been calling for urgent maritime security reforms and, frankly, we get precious little from this government. We do welcome the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Security Plans and Other Measures) Bill 2006. However, there are many other urgent reforms that are required to improve Australian maritime security. Under Labor’s plan, a department of homeland security would be organised around its two core responsibilities—border protection and protection against terrorist attacks within the border. That was outlined by Mr Beazley in his Sydney Institute speech on 4 August last year.

Our shadow homeland security ministry would provide a specialist focus on Australian national security. We believe that is necessary because security arrangements need to be tailored to Australia’s needs. The best way for that to be done is by a specific and dedicated department. We believe there is further need for maritime security reform. We think that in providing access to our ports and to vessels in and around our ports, there ought to be full knowledge of the crewing of such vessels.

At a hearing into maritime security, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee was informed that somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 foreign seamen visit our ports each year. Those 200,000 seamen—not Australian seamen but seamen from other countries—are not required to undergo the same level of security checks as our seamen. They do not have a security check at all. Therefore, we certainly will not be in a position to have a complete knowledge of those who visit our ports. It is one thing to talk about how one might ensure that there is an appropriate check on those crews from the time a ship berths if those crew members leave the vessel, but it is another thing to make assumptions about what might occur whilst those crew members are on a vessel approaching a berth or if those crew members do not leave the ship. We have raised those matters on a number of occasions.

Australia is becoming more and more reliant on foreign crewed vessels to provide our own domestic shipping needs rather than visiting our ports as a one-off, delivering goods which are imported into this country or collecting goods which are exported from this country. There are many vessels which are given a permit to trade on our coastline, to pick up domestic cargo, to move cargo between one Australian port and another or, in some cases, to continue to operate on the Australian coast on what is known as a continuing voyage permit—to continue to trade for a specific period and carry any number of cargoes in that period between any number of Australian ports.

Labor has for quite some time held the view that there are times when it is necessary for those foreign crewed vessels to be given the opportunity to carry cargo. That obviously occurs when there is not a suitable vessel available to carry the cargo or when a suitable vessel on the Australian coast is not available to carry that cargo. But what we have seen is a deterioration in the restrictions which have been placed on those vessels, to the point where it is almost a function of the department to determine that, if an Australian vessel does not provide shipping at the same rate or for the same remuneration as a foreign crewed vessel, the foreign crewed vessel is preferred and is given a permit.

That leads to a circumstance where we are seeing, day by day and week by week, the number of Australian crewed vessels working on the Australian coast carrying domestic cargoes between Australian ports declining. We are approaching the point where the domestic shipping industry will fall below a critical mass with which it can operate efficiently. We saw recently on the 7.30 Report an indication from Australian ship owners of the parlous state of Australian shipping brought about by this government’s administration of the permit system which allows foreign crewed vessels onto our coast. In the context of what we see as the deterioration of the state of Australian shipping, brought about by this government’s policy, we believe that the Senate ought to say something further. I move a second reading amendment:

At the end of the motion, add “but the Senate condemns the Howard Government for its failure to provide necessary maritime security and protect Australians, including:

(a)

the Government’s failure to conduct security checks on foreign crews;

(b)

the Government’s continued failure to ensure foreign ships provide manifestos of crew and cargo before arriving at an Australian port;

(c)

the ready availability of single and multiple voyage permits for foreign flag of convenience ships including the ready availability of permits for foreign flag of convenience ships carrying dangerous materials in Australian waters and ports;

(d)

the failure of the Government to examine or x-ray 90 per cent of shipping containers;

(e)

the Government’s failure to create a Department of Homeland Security to remove dangerous gaps and to better coordinate security in Australia; and

(f)

the Government’s failure to establish an Australian Coastguard to patrol our coastline”.