Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This means that Australian shipping companies that pay Australian level wages will not be able to compete and Australian mariners will lose their jobs. Senator Canavan says that is rubbish, but he does not actually care about Australian jobs. If he did, he would not think it was rubbish.

Make no mistake. If this legislation passes, it will destroy the Australian shipping industry. It will do this by removing the requirement for freight movers to first seek out an Australian vessel or, if one is not available, require any foreign-flagged vessel to pay the crew Australian level wages. The reforms would absolutely demolish the level playing field created by the former Labor government. It is clear that the only plan the Abbott government has for Australian mariners is to lower their wages and conditions or replace them with foreign workers.

In Bass Strait the outcome of this legislation will be that two-thirds of Australian maritime workers will lose their jobs. You do not need to take my word for that. The explanatory memorandum is very clear when it states:

The preferred option would be consistent with the generally progressive opening of the Australian domestic shipping market to foreign participation …

Not only does the legislation aim to hand Australian jobs to foreign workers but it actually measures its success by how many jobs are lost! In fact, the scale of the job losses is laid out in black and white in modelling attached to the Abbott government's coastal shipping legislation. The findings of the official modelling are totally unambiguous. Under the government's preferred option, two-thirds of Bass Strait shipping workers will lose their jobs to foreign workers if this malignant legislation passes through this place.

Currently, legislation requires all workers on Bass Strait to be Australians who must be paid Australian wages. But the modelling shows that Australian workers would plummet from 100 per cent to 35 per cent of the Bass Strait workforce. The government modelling also assumes that two-thirds of ships servicing Bass Strait would be foreign flagged. This is truly unbelievable. Not only is the government actively trying to destroy Australian jobs, but it actually using the number of jobs lost as a measure of the success of this wretched legislation.

While the Abbott government wants Australians to believe their three-word mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs, this legislation betrays their true agenda. I sincerely hope that Australians will look past the simplistic slogans and empty rhetoric of this government and judge them by their actions. The reality is that this is not an isolated incident. In fact, the Abbott government has a long and shameful record of selling out Australian workers. They goaded Holden to move off shore, they raised the white flag when Caterpillar announced plans to axe 280 jobs in Burnie and they are trying to shut down South Australia's submarine building industry. Now they are trying to ram through legislation that could send two in three Australian shipping workers on Bass Strait to the dole queue. It is a very short-sighted government that actively sets out to give Australian jobs to foreign workers. Not only that, but it then goes on to use the Australian job losses as part of the measure of the success of the appalling legislation.

Yet again, the government has shown its willingness to sell out Australian workers in the race to the bottom. At the same time, the government has completely failed to recognise the very real costs of sending these hard-working Australians into unemployment, not only for companies and government agencies but, more importantly, for their families and for the communities that these workers live in.

The Senate is scheduled to debate the legislation in the upcoming sittings of parliament. I urge senators in this place to stand strong against this government's plans to destroy Australian jobs. Last week, we saw the most unemployed people in Australia since 1994 and we saw confidence drop to an all-time low. The Abbott government's outrageous coastal shipping legislation will only make matters worse.

This government says they care about Australian jobs. But all we have seen since they got in is jobs going overseas and out the back door. There have been no jobs created for the future, for our children and grandchildren. We need a government that fights for Australian jobs, not just sells them out to the lowest bidder.