Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I was hoping not to go down this path, to have to regurgitate, but, with the greatest respect, we have a different minister at the table, so I think it is very important we take a few steps back so you can get a handle on what is going on. What we know in this nation is that when foreign ships come in with foreign crews—foreign flagged vessels or flags of convenience—within 24 to 48 hours an email is sent off to the ABF that says, 'This is who is on the ship.' Then the ABF go off and they have a little background check. They make sure that no flags come up. What the minister was trying to tell us is that everything is tickety-boo; everything is Mickey Mouse.

The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee had five inquiries into this. I also spoke to the Greens and the crossbenchers when this bill was before us months ago, back in March. It was around the time when that big heap of cocaine fell off the mothership and was picked up by the small fishing vessel. They said, 'Hang on, we've got to look a little bit further into this, because we have a very filthy stain on our maritime history that goes back only a few years, and it is a ship called the Sage Sagittarius'. You should know, Senator Seselja, what happened on the Sage Sagittarius under the leadership, or the captainship, of Captain Salas, a Filipino. On its way to Australia, not far out of port, one of the crew members fell overboard. They went missing—tragic, terrible. As the ship was coming into Newcastle—I thought it was Newcastle, but I'll stand corrected if it was Botany or whatever it was—just prior to it coming into the heads, within hours, another crewman went headfirst down into the bottom of the ship—dead.

The Japanese who owned the ship thought: 'What are we going to do? There's something mysterious going on on this ship.' I hope you are taking it in, Senator Seselja, because I'm going put the same questions that I put to the previous minister, who was given the wrong information and, I believe, didn't provide the right answer to the Senate. I'm not suggesting for one minute they purposely misled the Senate, but the Senate was not told the truth. So have a good listen here. What happened was the Japanese got the undercover detective or inspector and put him on the ship disguised as a seafarer. They went off. They left Australian shores. Chair, you will remember this vividly. It headed back to Japan. Just as the ship berthed and they were unloading, somehow the undercover detective fell into the conveyer belt and was killed—two deaths and one missing overboard.

The worst part about this was that before Captain Salas left our shores he admitted to gun running and illegally selling alcohol. Senator Sheldon asked questions of ministers and department officials: how rigid and how solid are these background checks? We expect that they are rigid and they are solid. How the hell we can find that out in 24 to 48 hours still baffles me. What we have worked out here, Minister, is that if someone has been caught doing something illegally and the name on the passport matches the face and it brings up a red flag then—yes, aren't we great?—we can stop this. The truth of the matter is that you, the government, have no idea if criminals are mixing on these ships if they haven't been caught mixing before. How the hell can we in this chamber delay the passage of legislation because we want to have a greater look into this to see that you want to do this properly? At the same damned time, you would have thought Labor concocted this, where a big heap of cocaine went off the side of the ship so we could say: 'See? There you go. It happened.' But there it is. I asked the previous minister: Who were the seafarers on that ship? Do we have the names? Are there investigations? I am still waiting for an answer. I'm hoping someone will come back to me.

Also, Minister, when I asked the minister who was previously in the position you're in, with the advisers there in the box, I clearly said, 'I don't hold these advisers culpable,' because I'd said very, very clearly that there is a minister in this place who no longer has the portfolio, Minister Dutton, who knows every filthy, sneaky, dirty little thing that happened on the Sage Sagittarius, yet he's been conveniently transferred to another portfolio. You would think that he would pass on the info all the way down the chain so the new advisers and the department officials get to know what he knows and what we, the Senate committee that did the inquiry, know.

So you see our frustration here, Minister. When we said to Minister Cash earlier on, 'Can you guarantee us, 100 per cent kosher, that you will know if anything has gone wrong and that, if there is criminality or a criminal conviction or if there are accusations around these foreign seafarers coming in, you would have a red flag that goes up?' the minister said very clearly—and I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong—'No, we had nothing on Captain Salas; there were no dramas.' Captain Salas admitted gun running. Captain Salas admitted bootlegging and selling alcohol. Captain Salas left our shores.

Minister, here's the crunch. Be very, very careful, please, because I don't want to see you getting done for something that you might innocently walk into. In his absence, the New South Wales coroner were doing an investigation in Sydney, and they couldn't find Captain Salas. The ABF couldn't find Captain Salas. The AFP couldn't find Captain Salas. The state jurisdictions couldn't find Captain Salas. It was a couple of years in between the two deaths and the missing seafarer that went overboard and when this New South Wales Coroner's Court was going on. At the smoko break, they were going to pull up stumps and say, 'We can't go any further because we can't find Captain Salas.' But, lo and behold, in the audience there was a journo who wrote for one of the News Corp rags up on the Sunshine Coast somewhere, Owen Jacques. Owen Jacques was in the room. Owen Jacques went up to the prosecutor at the smoko break and said, 'I can tell you, sir, where Captain Salas is.' All our agencies and our spooks and everyone else couldn't tell us, but Owen Jacques could tell us. You know why, Minister? He went to that magnificent thing called the internet, he punched out whatever it was that he punched out, and, lo and behold, there was Captain Salas. They could tell you the ship he was coming on and what port he was going into. I believe he was going into Gladstone. It also showed that he had been in and out of Gladstone and Weipa on a number of occasions. Minister Cash was advised that there was nothing on Captain Salas and that's why his name never popped up and they couldn't find him.

So I very, very carefully ask again: how the hell can we and the rest of Australia, without the help of Owen Jacques, believe this government that your 24-hour or 48-hour faxes with your stringent border or background checks on these seafarers can make the Australian population—all 25 million of us—really confident that you know what's coming in this nation and who's coming in this nation? How can you tell us that, Minister, when the previous minister sat where you are, stood up, and answered that that couldn't happen because they didn't have anything on Captain Salas? The rest of the world that followed this inquiry knew what was going on with Captain Salas. Owen Jacques, the reporter, knew where Captain Salas was. So, Minister, I ask you one more time, following on from the questions that Senator Sheldon asked: can you stand up here in front of this Senate and categorically tell us that you, the government, know every single person coming on our shores and know that they are the face on the passport and they have no criminality because your checks are rock solid and nothing will get past you?