Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister. Well, doesn't this go to the heart of things? What has been suggested here is that we should go to the criminals and ask them, 'Do you want an MSIC or an ASIC?' And when they say, 'No,' we do nothing. The whole idea of having people go through security checks is to have an appropriate security check. The people who are actually involved in criminal activity don't ask for MSICs. You'd be surprised the things that criminals do get up to. They won't even abide by regulations by asking for an MSIC, because they're going to walk off unescorted. Heaven forbid! Next they will be importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine, and bringing in guns and weapons and various other threats to this country.

It seems absolutely illogical there would be a situation where we have, in the case of Rio Tinto ships off the coast of Queensland last year—as I said, four were Australian vessels. And to the credit of both the crew and those companies that ran those vessels, they made sure that people had MSICs, because they wanted the extra check. They wanted it to be safe. They wanted it to be secure. They wanted people to actually work efficiently on their ports. These are all things that are of high merit.

When you go to the other four ships, the flag-of-convenience ships, they were doing the exact same types of work for Rio Tinto, they were doing the exact same work, but, funnily enough, those companies don't want or require MSICs to be taken out. In actual fact those crew members don't want MSICs taken out either—maybe because it takes a little bit of time or maybe because they're criminals that can't turn around and be held to account in this country under the system that we're applying at the moment, unless they apply for an MSIC, which requires a more rigorous approach to the oversight of those plying our borders all around this country. Is the minister telling the parliament that every single foreign crewperson who is not required to have an MSIC is never left unattended in secure areas of ports?