Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start by acknowledging the enormous pain and suffering of the family of Damien Mills. His father-in-law said Damien was 'a great dad, good husband and mate, son-in-law and son'. To lose a loved one is incredibly hard, and my heart really just goes out to Nicole, Damien's widow, and Richard, his father. I empathise with the loss that they are feeling. Having lost my wife only five months ago, I know that the grief you feel when you lose a loved one is overwhelming. It's now five years since Damien died, but I know—people have told me—that you never get over it. Damien will be in their lives forever, and that gulf, that sense of loss, will be with them forever.

I also want to thank Senator Sterle for bringing this bill to us today. Sometimes, in this place, you really wonder whether what you're doing is actually making a difference. But there are times when you see that here is something simple and straightforward that would make a difference. It's obviously not going to bring Damien Mills back, but it will make a difference going forward by reducing the risk of similar circumstances happening again. So thank you, Senator Sterle, for your work in bringing this to us today.

In the midst of their pain, Damien Mills's family have fought to make sure that what they went through doesn't happen to anyone else. His father-in-law said, 'We'd feel shattered if we went through all of this and then the same thing happened again.' I'd like to quote from Nicole Mills's powerful evidence to our Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. She said:

I would like to get the answers as to why my husband never returned home after spending the day on charter vessel Ten Sixty Six and what the Australian Maritime Safety Authority did in investigating the circumstances surrounding Damien's death.

We're here today because, clearly, we, as a committee, and Ms Mills haven't received satisfactory answers—not from AMSA and not from the coalition government. We have the tragic loss of Damien Mills's life; there are potentially other lives at stake that could be saved because of the simple actions that are being proposed in this legislation today.

It's worth noting that Damien's father had praise for the Western Australian Police Force and the Western Australian Water Police. He said they were 'diligent and thorough in their investigation'. And we do know that, as Senator Brockman just said, AMSA have actually been given a bit of a shake-up over this and that AMSA have now belatedly responded to this issue. We, of course, welcome the positive steps that they have taken, but more is needed, and it is needed now, not who knows how long down the track, when technology, maybe, will do something so that these sorts of accidents won't happen in the future. The time to be taking this simple step is now.

The change this bill makes is a simple one. As specified in the explanatory memorandum, it requires that, in certain situations, masters of domestic commercial vessels conduct, at a minimum, two headcounts of their passengers. That's not a big thing to do. It's not hard to do. They already have to do one. Doing one at the beginning and one at the end is not a great burden to put upon the masters of these vessels.

The rational for this is very clear. In the evidence to our RRAT committee hearing, the Western Australia Water Police said that, had they known that Mr Mills was not on the vessel when it returned to shore, they would very likely have been able to find him and save his life. That's the simple reality of why we are here today with this legislation: if they had known that Mr Mills wasn't on board, they would have been able to immediately mount a search to find him and the likelihood is that he would have been alive.

I want to go to the AMSA response. As I said, they have taken a number of positive steps. They have had a bit of a shake-up to think about what needs to happen in these sorts of circumstances. AMSA accepted that introducing a requirement for two headcounts would improve things. They argued for flexibility and technology rather than requiring two headcounts. Senator Brockman just said that technology was going to save the day. With regard to flexibility, I think that this is a time when flexibility is not required. This is a simple step. You don't need flexibility; you need to know how many passengers get on board your vessel and you need to know how many passengers get off, to make sure that they are all there. It's not a case where you need flexibility. Flexibility was what ended up happening. Flexibility meant that there wasn't a second headcount taken. Flexibility meant that, very sadly, someone went overboard and was not missed and ended up losing his life.

With regard to technology, the prospect of technology making it easy to identify who is on and who is off and whether they stay on the vessel for the whole time has great promise, but, in the meantime, while we are still developing that technology, I think the legislation that requires two headcounts is a very important step. Maybe it will only be stop-gap legislation. Maybe in a year or two we can come back with an amendment to this legislation to say we don't need two headcounts anymore because we've got this fabulous new technology that will do the same thing as the two headcounts. I would look forward to that and I'd be very happy to support that amendment to this legislation when and if that occurs, but, in the meantime, this is a really simple and important measure to make sure that people are safe. Fundamentally, that's one of the basic things that we are here to do as parliamentarians, and which the government is here to do as well: keep people safe. When you've got legislation like this being proposed, which wouldn't impose a massive burden and would be simple, I think it's incumbent upon us to support the legislation. It's a really sensible change and it's an important change.

Once again, I want to commend Senator Sterle for all of his work on this issue, bringing this to us today and introducing what will become Damien's law. As you will understand, the Greens support this wholeheartedly. Despite the contribution from Senator Brockman just then, we call upon the government to see that they should support it too. I would really find it bewildering if they did not. Thank you.