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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

What sort of government is it that actively sets out to destroy Australian jobs? What sort of government would tell an Australian business owner that they might want to consider registering their business interests in a foreign country, sacking their Australian staff and hiring foreign workers at a fraction of the pay? What sort of government puts forward legislation to this place that will kill off a vital industry and, with it, strategic national skills capacity? I will you what sort of government that is: the government of Australia under the reckless leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Yet again we have seen a government that has savagely and vindictively targeted an important national industry. We saw it with car making. We saw it with renewables. We saw it with science. And now the government has Australian industry in its sights.

The Abbott government's proposed coastal shipping legislation will create the wholesale destruction of the Australian shipping industry through the complete deregulation of our coastal shipping for foreign-flag ships. The loss of vital strategic seafarer jobs is not an unfortunate side-effect of the legislation; it is the very purpose of it. It is not an accidental by-product; it is the very reason for its existence. In fact economic think tank the Australia Institute found that 1,089 Australian seafarer jobs, or 93 per cent of the current work force, will be lost if the Abbott government's coastal shipping legislation proceeds. This is a very serious threat for my home state of Tasmania, which is incredibly reliant on stable, reliable shipping services to link us to the mainland and the rest of the world. Official government modelling outlines the conclusion that this shocking legislation will see four of the six ships serving Bass Strait make a decision to sail under a foreign flag. It notes that if the legislation passes only 35 per cent of the crews on Bass Strait will be fully Australian. The remaining 65 per cent of crews are predicted to be what the government calls 'mixed'. What the government is not so up front about is that there will be only a pathetic token requirement of two senior Australian seafarers in each mixed crew. Worse, these people do not even need to be Australian nationals.

In the same document the government notes the assumption that the two Sprit of Tasmania ships will remain Australian flagged. I was very concerned about this assumption and whether the local flagging of our iconic Tasmanian ships would be protected. So I asked the department at a hearing of the inquiry into the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 on Monday whether there was anything within the legislation to guarantee that this would be the case. Their answer was very clear: no—there would be no protections. There would be nothing to prevent the government, if this legislation gets through, from registering these Tasmanian icons in another country. The other two regular freight services across Bass Strait are run by Toll and SeaRoad. The government presumes that its legislation will cause these companies to make the decision to foreign flag. Bass Strait shipping operator SeaRoad Holdings put in a submission to the inquiry into this bill, and national marine and terminals manager Dale Emmerton appeared before the committee on Monday night. There Mr Emmerton warned that if the bill proceeds the company may have no choice but to hire foreign workers, creating a massive redundancy liability. On this matter he said:

If you look at a worst-case situation where nobody is operating with Australian crews, then I assume that SeaRoad would be forced to respond to that and seek to lower cost by employing foreign crews. That, in itself, has some enormous impacts that have not been particularly well publicised—that is, what do we do with the 60-odd seafarers we currently employ?

The reality is that under the government's plan for the wholesale deregulation of Australia's coastline to foreign-flag ships the local industry simply will not survive. Australian shippers, sailing under Australian flags with Australian crew being paid Australian wages, will not be able to compete. But this is not just about jobs; this goes to the very core of national security. A nation's maritime capacity is a strategic strength that must be maintained. If Australia loses our maritime and seafarer skill base, we will put ourselves in a very precarious position. The Abbott government needs to cease this reckless course of action and turn its mind to creating Australian jobs and building up our industries. (Time expired)