Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers to the questions asked by Labor senators. I would like to follow up on the point that was just raised by Senator Urquhart. I agree countries do need to maintain their maritime capacity, which is why this government is investing heavily in our maritime construction industry and has brought forward the construction of future frigates and the offshore patrol vessel and announced a continuous build of naval ships so that we can actually provide that continuity and capacity in the industry.

I am intrigued by the opposition's comments in this area. Under the current coastal shipping legislation, which is legislation that they created in 2012, we have seen a 63 per cent drop in the carrying capacity of the major Australian coastal trading fleet. So despite the fact that we have seen an increase in the amount of freight that is carried, the number of ships has decreased from around 30 to around 15. There has been a large drop in that capacity under the legislation that the Labor Party brought in, and yet they come in here complaining that something that we are looking to put in place may damage the capacity. Well, that is already happening under the current scheme.

I also notice that some of the statistics that were used throughout the MUA's submission to the Senate committee referred to a $4.25 billion benefit in output and an additional 9,000 jobs under the current system on the assumption that there were 100 ships registered on the Australian international shipping register, and yet not a single ship has been registered on this register under Labor's system. So part of the problem is they are forecasting great things, but the reality is that under the system they put in place it just has not developed that way. And yet, in areas such as naval ship construction this government is investing money, unlike the previous Labor government, into making that a sustainable future.

I would also like to talk briefly about the response to questions from Senator Bullock, where he talked about employment growth. I want to highlight the fact that it is the actions of this government that have created more than 300,000 new jobs at a rate significantly higher than in the same period under Labor. Members opposite have made much of the fact that in recent times we have seen an increase in the unemployment rate. Again, I come back to the fact that statistics can be misleading. ABC journalist Michael Janda—and remember that the ABC are no great fans or advocates for the coalition generally—wrote in an article when those figures were released:

The reason why unemployment jumped despite much better-than-expected jobs growth is that the participation rate soared 0.3 percentage points to 65.1 per cent.

What that means is that the actions taken by the coalition government have created an increased confidence and expectation, certainly nationally. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my own state of South Australia, where, after 14 years of Labor government, we have the nation's highest unemployment rate because of the conditions there that are not favourable to people interested in creating jobs. Nationally, we are seeing this job creation and we are seeing an increased confidence, and so the measure of that ratio—the number of people in work versus the number of people looking for work—has gone up, yes. But we are also creating more jobs, which is a positive thing. That has come about because we have got rid of things like the carbon tax. Qantas attribute that as one of the reasons they have turned their profits around, because we got rid of the carbon tax. The mining tax has gone. And despite the peddling of fear by the opposition at the behest of the CFMEU, things like the China free trade agreement will mean more jobs for Australians. The protections that are in place for Australian jobs are no different under the chapter 10 provisions to those that existed under Labor. There has been no change, and there will be no change under ChAFTA, to domestic legislation that impacts on when people from overseas can take jobs. The ChAFTA will be good for Australian jobs.

Question agreed to.