Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As an island continent, it is in Australia's economic, environmental and national interests that we are a shipping nation. That is why it is so alarming that the Turnbull government has chosen to bring forward such a deeply flawed piece of legislation as the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. This bill sells out the national interest, it sells out Australian businesses and it sells out Australian workers. That is why the opposition strongly opposes this bill, confident in the knowledge that our position reflects the values of average Australians. This bill allows overseas flagged and crewed ships to pay workers Third World wages to undercut Australian operators on domestic trade routes. It will destroy Australian jobs, but you do not have to take it from me. Do not think just because Labor is standing here making this argument that it is solely an argument we have made up. Senators, I want to quote from the government's official modelling. You can find it, if you want to look for it, in the regulatory impact statement and the cost-benefit analysis that is part of the bill. You can actually go to the government's own documents to back up everything that is being said here today. This is what it says, in the government's own words, on page 156:

Many of the operators currently operating under the Australian General Register would likely re-flag their vessels in order to compete with the foreign operators who enjoy the benefit of comparatively lower wage rates. Australian seafarer jobs would be adversely affected as Australian operators re-flag from the Australian General Register. Ship operators are likely to replace—

you will not believe that this is what is actually what is written in the government bill—

Australian seafarers—

paid under an enterprise agreement, that is, fair work rates—

with foreign seafarers (paid under ITF rates)—

that is, a long way below fair work rates. So the government's bill says that what will happen with this bill is that Australian companies will change where their ships are registered or flagged, as it is referred to in this sector. They will register in Liberia, a landlocked nation, then they will sack all their Australian workforce and employ overseas workers or, if the Australian workers who have the jobs are lucky, they will have their rates reduced to the international standard. That is what it actually says. To be fair, for once the government are not hiding their agenda. They are not hiding that they have a bill here which specifically states the wages of Australian workers will be cut or they will be sacked. And to underscore this point, the government shows that 88 per cent of the claimed savings to industry from the bill are from the sacking of the workers and the cutting of the wages—that is on page 75. So from the companies and the employers in this sector, which we modelled, will come 88 per cent of the savings—from sacking Australian workers or from cutting their rates. This is what it says:

The modelling undertaken for the cost-benefit analysis did not include the cost of the potential loss of Australian seafarer jobs.

They do not even care. That is just what is going to happen—88 per cent of the savings and then we do not bother to model the cost of all those job losses. The government has also been good enough to tell us specifically where the jobs will be lost from. This is an extraordinary bill, but at least it is the truth from the Liberal Party. At least for once they are telling the truth as opposed to pretending that there is no impact on Australian workers. They say that hundreds of jobs will be lost in the Bass Strait non-bulk passenger crews and iron ore trades.

The Australia Institute used the government's modelling to make the simple calculation that 93 per cent—not 19 but 93 per cent—of Australian seafarer jobs in the coastal trade are expected to be lost. Ninety-three per cent of current Australian jobs will be lost in the seafarer coastal trade. What an extraordinary proposition from those opposite! The bill will see Australian mariners, who are subject to stringent background checks, replaced by foreign workers whose backgrounds cannot be absolutely clarified in the same way. Jobs, the environment and safety, which are all basic requirements of good governments, have all been thrown overboard by a government blinded to the national interests by their hatred of the Maritime Union of Australia. They are blinded by their need to reward big business with lower shipping costs no matter what the price to ordinary Australian families. It is an extraordinary bill but, again, at least I admire the government's honesty. For the first time that I have seen in nearly 20 years in this place, they are actually admitting that the sole purpose of the bill is to sack Australian workers and to cut their wages. Normally they disguise that, but today? No, they are being up-front about it.

This legislation is unmistakably bad for Australia. The bill is designed to repeal reforms the former Labor government implemented following a parliamentary committee inquiry and months of consultation with all the relevant stakeholders. Labor's changes included the requirement that firms seeking to move freight between Australian ports first seek out an Australian operator. That is right—we were shockers. We said you have to try and find an Australian operator and that, where no Australian ship was available, foreign vessels could be used provided they paid Australian-level wages on domestic sectors. How shocking! We made it mandatory that, if you could not find an Australian vessel, an Australian operator and an Australian workforce, you had to pay the international crew Australian rates while they were in Australian waters. There was a zero tax rate for Australian shipping companies; the creation of an Australian international shipping register to help grow our international fleet—we are an island, for God's sake—and the creation of a maritime workforce development forum to improve the training of seafarers and port workers. Labor is committed to Australian shipping companies getting fair access to the domestic shipping industry. Ships moving freight between Australian ports should be crewed by Australian mariners.

When foreign flagged vessels are required to assist with the growing Australian shipping industry, their crews should be paid Australian-level wages. We think that is only fair, as it gives a fair go to all industry participants. It is reasonable to expect the same on our shipping highways. By way of example, the United States does not allow any freight to be moved by sea between American ports unless the vessel involved was built in the United States, is owned by Americans and is crewed by Americans. There is a hardline position. Senators, it is not just the United States that takes regulatory steps to ensure its coastal trade is done by its own citizens. You might think that it is just Australia being quirky, but let me give you the list. Every other nation in the G20 does it as well—Japan, Canada, Indonesia, China, Russia and the EU. They all have provisions to maximise local involvement in coastal trading, yet here in Australia the Turnbull government is obsessed with attacking unions, cutting wages and sacking workers. These are not the Abbott government's ideological fetishes anymore—this is the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pursuing cutting Australian jobs and cutting Australian wages.

This shipping legislation bill focuses on the former government's Coastal Trading Act. It changes the act's name—we called it 'revitalising Australian shipping'. It no longer refers to revitalising Australian shipping; it narrows the act to fostering a competitive shipping services industry and maximising available shipping capacity around the Australian coast. There is no reference to Australian shipping or Australian jobs or Australian industry anymore. There is no mention of maintaining the Australian shipping industry, only of delivering arrangements that reduce shipping costs. This is a bill that sets out its name and objective to reduce the costs and then says that 88 per cent of the costs are actually about cutting wages and sacking workers. The definition of Australian nationality when referring to a ship has also been removed. That is right—they have taken the definition of Australian nationality out of a bill. This parliament will remove the definition of Australian nationality, because of this government's complete indifference. Mr Turnbull, for all his slick suits and fancy waffle, has a complete indifference to whether a ship carrying cargo around the Australian coast is Australian or not. He does not care. He is happy enough to send all his assets to a tax haven in the Cayman Islands and run them through there; that is all fine. But, when it comes to Australian jobs, Mr Turnbull always follows the money. His money is in the Cayman Islands, but, when it comes to Australian jobs, he wants to put Cayman Island workers into Australia. That is what we have got here.

As Labor said in the committee report on this bill, 'With this framework approach, the detail of the bill heads down entirely the wrong path. This is why Labor believes this bill cannot be gainfully amended.' All of existing part 4 of the act which creates the existing system of preference for Australian ships in the coastal trade is replaced with a permit system with no preference. No-one listening to this debate around Australia or sitting in the gallery or sitting opposite in these chambers should be under any illusions, coastal trading permits will be available to foreign ships on the same basis as Australian ships.

When we had the Senate inquiry into this, we had one Australian operator appear before the committee and tell us that when he asked two departmental officials about the consequences of this bill, they specifically told him that his option was to reflag, sack his workers and hire foreign workers. He actually turned up in the parliament, notwithstanding that the Prime Minister had called his liar, notwithstanding that the Deputy Prime Minister had called him a liar, and told us what had been said. We then called the officials to the table and they admitted that is what they had said.

This poor operator who runs coastal ships up and down the west coast of Western Australian was called a liar in public by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. These people will go to any lengths to defame ordinary working Australians, when the officials turned up and admitted that that was exactly what they said. But when this gentleman went public and said, 'I can't believe I am being told by public servants employed by the government of Australia that I should sack my Australian workforce and reflag my vessel—that is what they told me,' he was called a liar. That is the test for a government.

The Prime Minister of Australia is making a big play about how Mr Abbott has gone and he is not Mr Abbott. Do not judge Mr Turnbull on his silver tongue; judge him on the bills he passes through parliament, the policies he pursues, the GST—the 15 per cent on food—he wants to give every Australian as a present for Christmas. Enjoy Christmas this year. This will be the last time you will be able buy a Christmas turkey without a 15 per cent tax on it. Enjoy your Christmas turkey this year, because next year, if Mr Turnbull is elected Prime Minister of Australia by the Australian people, you will be paying a 15 per cent GST on your turkey. This bill is a turkey and it should be defeated.

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

As I rise to oppose the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, there are 19 Australians standing strong on the ship on which they make a living, the MV Portland, and it is refusing to take its final journey from Portland in Victoria to Singapore. The owners of the ship, Alcoa, are poised to sack the Australian workers, choosing instead to employ a low-paid foreign crew on its route between Western Australia and Victoria. Their plight is indicative of the coastal shipping industry as a whole. It is a sector that is doing its best to stay put but copping rough seas in every direction, particularly from the Turnbull government with this bill.

We all well know that our nation is girt by sea and it is vital because of that that we have a strong local shipping sector. Shipping carries the vast majority of Australia's trade. In a single year, ships move nearly a billion tonnes of goods, worth about $200 million, in and out of our ports, employing 14,000 people at sea or on shore, people like those on board the MV Portland right now. These volumes of domestic freight are on the increase. We should be doing everything we can to support these people maintain their livelihood. Instead of that, the Abbott-Turnbull government is cutting them loose with this bill, which continues the attacks on people in their workplace—attacks we see all too often.

The current challenges are coming from two directions: the industry must compete with subsidised land freight sectors and with international ships, which use much cheaper foreign labour. Where Australian seafarers have to be paid award wages, we have international foreign labour being paid $2 an hour. Instead of addressing these challenges with the industry and with the workers, the government has made the challenges even more difficult. Instead of facilitating ways to strengthen our local industry, to overcome the fact that we are a high-wage nation, the government is trying to push this bill through—a bill that will decimate what is left of Australian coastal shipping. Instead of standing with the workers, this government has embarked on a race to the bottom on workplace rights in the shipping industry.

Through this bill, the government wants to force Australian flagged ships to compete with low-cost foreign operators that do not have the same responsibilities to their workers in terms of minimum wage and working conditions. Over the weekend, I was contacted by a seafarer by the name of Chris, who said:

After spending years of training and hard work on our careers this situation is heartbreaking for my peers and (me). The possibility is real, if this goes ahead we will no longer have the opportunity to be employed in our own country. Nearly all of us will have to take our skills overseas or seek a new career.

He continued:

It beggars belief that our own government, who is meant to represent us, is seeking to put us out of a job.

The Turnbull government is hanging Chris and his workmates out to dry. Reforms introduced by the previous government to coastal shipping have only been in place since 2012—not nearly enough time for the reforms to take effect, but with this bill the government is tearing them down. The intention is clear: to deregulate Australian shipping until we have next to no local industry left.

The cost-benefit analysis accompanying this bill says it all. It estimates only 88 Australian seafarers, or seven per cent of the current workforce, will still have their jobs if these changes go through; 93 per cent of Australian seafarers currently operating in coastal shipping will lose their jobs. This is what this legislation will mean. So, apart from the Spirit of Tasmania, Australian-crewed ships will be entirely eliminated, and the rest of our coastline will end up with only foreign workers who are not subject to our country's standards.

This week I met another seafarer, called Mick. Mick currently is a pilot. He pilots ships into Port Botany, including oil tankers. It is a really important job, and it is really important that it is done well, with every safety regulation and every workplace control in place. He had 15 years experience at sea before he became a pilot. Where is this experience going to come from if we have a maritime sector that includes only 88 Australian seafarers in our coastal trade? We will not have it. That is the reality. We will be saying: 'Oh, no! We have a labour shortage. We haven't got people who have the skills to be pilots.' We will be importing, on 457 visas, Indian and Filipino pilots who do not know the Australian conditions, do not know Australian waters and have not done Australian training, or we will have training courses to become a pilot, which are all very well in theory—in theory they can tick off that they have done all these training courses—but then those pilots will be lacking experience, and it is experience that counts when situations get really tricky.

The government says these changes are inevitable, but independent assessment submitted to the committee who examined this bill looked at the regulatory impact statement and the cost-benefit analysis underpinning this bill, and this assessment shows that these are not documents that provide a sound basis for decision making or for policy development. Both largely ignore the economic context of the coastal shipping industry, contain omissions and have a number of technical flaws. You would think that people working in Australian waters should be subject to our country's proud tradition of high workplace standards, but no. What the government is proposing is one rule for land-based jobs and another for work being carried out on water in Australia.

Earlier this year, I got an insight into life on board a foreign-flagged ship that was anchored in Yarraville. This ship was working for CSR. It was operating in the coastal trade. It was being run by a foreign crew. It was operating for CSR and plying the east coast with sugar to be refined in Yarraville. The mostly Filipino seafarers on this ship were having major issues with undrinkable water and with their pay and conditions. They were being supported by the Seafarers International Union to get some recourse and some redress for the conditions they were facing, but it was a hard slog that they had to face in order to just get basic quality conditions. With the support of the international union, they managed to get the Russian captain of the ship removed from the ship and replaced by another captain. Is this what we want for our coastal shipping trade? It is not what we want for Australian shipping. We are a wealthy enough country that we can afford to be looking after our workers, looking after our coast and making sure that the conditions operating along our coast are conditions that we should be proud of as Australians.

These changes will hit our tourism sector as well. Australian coastal tourism operators simply will not be able to compete with foreign-flagged vessels that employ foreign labour. It does not make sense. They would not have that problem if their business were on an inland river or a lake. But making sense is not what this bill is about. At the recent Senate hearing into this bill, the evidence showed the government is happy to leave local marine tourism operators out to dry. We have heard plenty in this place, both as part of the inquiry and reported in this place, about the Western Australian cruise operator Bill Milby from North Star Cruises, who submitted to the inquiry evidence that the government's own senior bureaucrats had advised him to reflag his vessel overseas and replace his 50 Australian workers with foreign crew. He did not want to do that. He wanted to be able to support his workers. He did not want to dump his local workers, but he felt he was being advised to do that and he would have to do that in order to compete with foreign-flagged vessels. This is not the situation that we want. We have to be able to have a way forward to keep those jobs here in Australia.

These laws will not just impact on the rights and wages of people at work, however; they will have a massive environmental impact too. The more freight we can get onto ships, the fewer trucks we need on roads and the lower the greenhouse gas emissions. If the traffic in our coastal waters is not properly managed, our marine environment, particularly the Great Barrier Reef, will be put at risk. We will be seeing more disasters like that of the Shen Neng 1, which spilt oil on the reef in 2010. Foreign-flagged vessels have a very high rate of 'detentions' and they are not subject to the rigour that we set here in Australia for our own vessels. If we look at the number of 'shipping occurrences' reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in the period 2005 to 2012, we see 611 vessels registered in another country reported, almost triple the reports for Australian vessels. Why are we risking our fisheries, our coastal environment and our Great Barrier Reef?

One of the big issues with these foreign-flagged vessels coming in to do our coastal trade is that they might only be here once or twice. There is no incentive for the operators to comply with the local legislation, even if they know that in theory they have to comply with that legislation. If they do not, so what? They are not going to be back for another year or so. The operators of our Australian domestic ships know that they have to keep the standards up, because they know that the whole business depends upon it.

So the Greens will not be supporting this bill. This government, as we know, wants to rip our nation's workplace standards to shreds. This bill is not going to live up to its promise to strengthen Australia's coastal shipping industry. It will provide little economic benefit, it will see the demise of the remaining Australian coastal trading ships and it will mean local jobs are lost. The shipping industry is not something that we should just let flounder. There is opportunity for growth in Australian shipping, but the government and all sectors of the industry are going to have to work together to realise this potential.

Last night I attended the dinner being put on by the Maritime Industry Australia Limited. We heard from the Norwegian ambassador, who was telling us about the maritime industry in Norway and what the growth of the maritime industry in Norway is based upon. It was very interesting to hear from Norway because they, like Australia, are a high-wage country. But they have a shipping industry which is growing and in fact provides 38 per cent of the export income of the whole country. Thirty-eight per cent of Norway's export income comes from their maritime sector. The success, the strength, of their maritime sector is based upon having government and the industry working together. It is based on innovation. It is based on willingness for the industry to take risks, and it is about the whole sector supporting itself, with government support, and government taking a role to work out what needs to happen in order to grow the industry. They have maritime clusters that bring whole different sectors of the industry together to support each other.

These are the sorts of directions where we should be heading, but it is not going to happen unless we have a government that is actually committed to seeing what the growth in the shipping industry is going to be, rather than this presumption—which this bill has—that, no, the Australian shipping industry is just going to disappear. Fundamentally, that growth, the potential, of the shipping industry needs to be based upon presuming that, yes, we are going to have ongoing high wages, and they are compatible with the growth in the industry. Any seafarer, whether they are on a foreign registered ship operating under licence in the Australian coastal trade or working on an Australian ship, has to be subject to Australian industrial relations laws. We have to maintain our workplace standards and ensure a level playing field for shipping operators.

Last night at the dinner and at the shipping summit that was organised by the ACTU recently, the overwhelming message from the industry was the need for certainty. They will not get that certainty if this legislation is passed. It is inevitable that, if we pass this legislation, a change of government will mean we will be back to the drawing board. We will be lurching from one set of legislation to another, completely undermining that certainty which is needed to underpin growth and development in the industry.

At the dinner last night, I spoke to a whole range of different representatives from companies that are working in this sector, ranging from Rio Tinto to other container operators. The thing that they said to me, the overwhelming message, just like the overwhelming message from the ACTU's shipping summit, was, 'We need certainty.' They need to know that they can invest with certainty and that the conditions are not going to change, the legislation is not going to change, from government to government.

I really want to thank those who made submissions to the inquiry into this bill and to the broader conversation. Those voices, like Maritime Industry Australia, the Maritime Union of Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers and many others, have had critical input to the inquiry and to the debate more broadly. I know from talking to them that most of those stakeholders do not want to see this legislation passed, because they know that it is not going to be in the interest of growth, bringing them together and working out and having a consistent, ongoing, lasting framework to develop the industry.

What the Greens are calling upon the government to do—and I think, if we reject this legislation today, the opportunity is then there to go back to the drawing board and say, 'Okay, where do we go to from here?'—is to bring all sectors of the industry together to determine, as much as possible, a consensus way forward for the industry that is going to stand the test of time. The Maritime Union of Australia have put forward some suggestions. They know that there are changes that need to be made to the current legislation. They put forward some suggestions of key areas that they would like to see changed to streamline the administration of the licensing provisions; to clarify the object of the act to remove ambiguity and specify that the primary object is to promote Australian participation in coastal shipping; to provide for differential licence application and grant requirements, removing the one-size-fits-all approach—and that recommendation is also consistent with the majority report of the Senate inquiry into the bill—and to streamline the contestability provisions.

The MUA have suggestions. The industry across the board and different stakeholders have different suggestions. We have to have a situation where we can bring people together to work collaboratively to develop the legislative framework and the platform so that we can have that certainty. We have to have a situation where we know that elements of the industry can invest with certainty so that we can be moving forward and have a maritime industry that is based on growth and innovation and is going to take us forward—so that we really can be maximising the potential and the opportunities of the Australian shipping industry.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us make no mistake about what the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 seeks to do. It seeks to set up, in effect, a parallel industrial relations system in this country whereby maritime workers are treated in one way—a terrible way, I might add—and people who work on land, even people who work on land in the transport and logistics sector in our land based supply chains, are treated far, far better and far, far more fairly and are afforded far greater protections in terms of their workplace safety than maritime workers would be should this legislation pass. This is, in effect, maritime Work Choices, but it is even worse than that because, of course, should this legislation pass, shipping workers in this country, who will overwhelmingly be working on foreign flagged vessels and who inevitably will be foreign workers, will have to put up with even worse work conditions than the draconian Work Choices legislation delivered for Australian workers.

Historically, conservative coalition parties in this country have a long and terrible history when it comes to the way they value and the way they treat shipping workers in Australia. And the coastal shipping changes contained in this legislation are another chapter in that terrible book. Remember, this started as an Abbott government policy and it is now being continued—as so much is currently being continued—as a Turnbull government policy. It will oversee the decimation of employment for Australians in the Australian shipping industry. It will cost significantly in terms of Australian jobs and it will cost significantly in terms of the working conditions of workers who are left in the Australian maritime industry sectors. Of course, it will also significantly increase environmental risks for our beautiful coastal waters and coastlines.

Effectively, the government is brazenly trying to sack just about the entire current Australian maritime workforce and replace them with cheaper workers sourced from other countries no doubt, with resultant environmental and occupational health impacts that will flow from these changes. It is like a large-scale version of the Patrick stevedores' dispute in 1998—and who can forget those difficult and terrible days—except instead of guards, barbed wire and German shepherd dogs we have legislation and weasel words from this government.

The net result of this legislation, according to MUA modelling, will be the loss of more than 1,000 jobs across Australia. In speaking as a senator for Tasmania, it is worth pointing out that over 200 of those jobs will be lost from my home state of Tasmania. In fact, the MUA estimates that in the Tasmanian context the only Australian shipping jobs that will remain will be those working on the Spirit of Tasmania, which is less than 90 people. So we will, as has been so eloquently pointed out by our spokesperson on this issue, Senator Rice, be very strongly voting against this legislation. As I alluded to earlier, if we go ahead with these proposed changes there will inevitably be a drop in working conditions, and we have heard story after story in this country of the exploitation of foreign workers on foreign flagged vessels that have worked in Australian waters. They are terrible stories of exploitation and they should have no part in the narrative of our great country.

Not only will there inevitably be a drop in working conditions; there will also be a drop in environmental standards, and our coastline is one of our greatest national assets. We have iconic areas right around our beautiful continent, including global icons like the Great Barrier Reef, and we should value these because they are our competitive advantages as a country. These are the assets that our country has that can deliver jobs and prosperity into the future for Australians. We recently saw the appalling way that 36 Tasmanian workers were treated on the Alexander Spirit, and this legislation is an attempt by this Commonwealth government to make such job cuts commonplace.

I would like to turn my attention to some specific local issues in Tasmania. Recently, a company called DP World Australia promised to build an expanded port facility at the Port of Burnie but only if these laws are passed. I want to say very clearly to the Senate today that Tasmanians here have been presented by DP World Australia and the Commonwealth government with a false choice. We do not have to choose in Tasmania between lower freight costs and Australian and Tasmanian shipping jobs. That is a false choice. The Australian Greens acknowledge the challenges faced by exporters in Tasmania. Put simply, it is too expensive to get freight across Bass Strait. But remember, we are a federation here in Australia and, if we are serious about the federal model, all states should get a fair crack assessed on the basis of genuine need at funding pies like, for example, the National Highway funding. I want to put very clearly on the table my support for Bass Strait to be made part of the National Highway and for National Highway funding to be allocated on the basis of genuine need. The problem is that successive Commonwealth governments see National Highway funding as one of the biggest opportunities to pork-barrel that exists in the Commonwealth budget, and we need to see far more rigor and far more transparency applied in National Highway funding, and it should be assessed on the basis of genuine need. Bass Strait should be made part of the National Highway, and, if we did those two things, a number of the very significant freight challenges facing Tasmanian exporters would be addressed. So it is a false choice for Tasmanians to be told they have to either lower standards on Australian shipping or put up with high freight costs and potentially not get an expansion to the Burnie port.

Australia has a skilled, hardworking maritime workforce, and they should not be cast aside because of an ideological attack on them, and that is what this bill is in part: an ideologically based attack on our maritime workforce all because the Turnbull government believes these workers are paid too much. That, fundamentally, is the other driver of this legislation. The government believes that our maritime workers are paid too much, and they have acknowledged that, if this legislation passes, there will be a significant reduction in pay for people working on Australian shipping routes. So we will not support these changes that sell out the rights and futures of Australian workers. We will not support this legislation, which will place at risk our fisheries and our coastal environment, including global icons like the Great Barrier Reef, simply so that companies who are already making a reasonable profit can make a bit more. We believe in a well-trained and reasonably paid shipping workforce, and we believe that such a workforce can be at the centre of Tasmania's and Australia's prosperity in the coming years.

We have spoken at length about the fact that Tasmania's competitive advantages—and our state has many competitive advantages—create a framework for high-value export industries like, for example, viticulture, aquaculture, cut flowers, honey, small fruits, boutique beer and cider, produce from broadacre farming and a range of other high-quality, world-class products and services that we create and produce in Tasmania. We realise that they need an acceptable way to export into national and international markets, and we want to work constructively with anyone in this place or the other place who will work with us to bring about equity in terms of national highway funding and having Bass Strait included as part of the national highway. But all of those industry sectors that I mentioned are contingent on safe, reliable and sustainable shipping. They need safe, reliable and sustainable shipping to bring their products to the rest of the country and the rest of the world, and we will not stand by and go down without a fight as this government tries to throw the hardworking people in the shipping industry onto the scrap heap.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shipping is the economic lifeblood of any island population, and so it is with our island nation continent, Australia. If it is the economic lifeblood for our island nation continent, it is even more so for our island state, the jewel in the crown—namely, my home state of Tasmania.

Australia has a large landmass with its population hubs and centres of production strewn across the 7.692 million square kilometres that make up Australia. As our national anthem reminds us, our land is girt by sea. The mainland enjoys a coastline of 35,876 kilometres. On top of that there is another 23,859 kilometres of island coastlines. We have 758 estuaries. So it will not surprise that Australia has a deep and rich maritime history. Put simply, we are reliant on shipping. Indeed, we export two-thirds of our production.

My home state of Tasmania and our nation, Australia, require, need and are entitled to an effective shipping service. Despite this national imperative, our waterfront and shipping services have been held to ransom from time to time and far too often. Dr Hal Colebatch's excellent work, The Secret War, exposed the sabotage and treacherous activities of certain elements during World War II—something for which the Maritime Union of Australia still needs to apologise. That aside, it seems that today's elements are not jeopardising our national sovereignty and integrity in the face of threatened invasion, but they are prejudicing our jobs and economic wellbeing in the face of international competition as we grapple with the imperative of job creation, especially for our young Australians. We need the very best shipping service we can get. To opt for anything less, to be satisfied with second-best or even the world's worst shipping service is to do a great disservice to our workers, our farmers, our producers, our manufacturers and, indeed, every single Australian consumer, because we all pay the price.

The Liberal-National coalition aspires to provide the very best for our nation in all our public policy endeavours that we have introduced. As a result, we have introduced and are now debating the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. This bill is designed to make the goods we buy cheaper and the goods we export more saleable; in other words, it is designed to lower our cost of living and create even more jobs. Every extra dollar charged for shipping compromises Australian jobs and our cost of living.

Until the changes championed by Mr Shorten's Labor Party and the Greens, we had a somewhat acceptable regulatory framework for our shipping services. But as was and remains the Labor-Greens wont, they had to fix it. And fix it they did, their policy inspiration coming direct from the ugly and extreme Maritime Union of Australia. The Labor-Greens changes were at best recklessly foolhardy but predictably disastrous. Having seen the predictable consequences of these reckless changes, one may have been excused for thinking that Labor and the Greens would quietly allow our rectifying legislation through the parliament and not draw attention to their policy failure. But no, they are incapable of acknowledging the glaring and obvious policy failure because they rely on the Maritime Union of Australia for numbers at meetings of Labor Party conferences, for their endorsement and for funding for their campaigns. So what did Labor's changes to the coastal trading licensing system inflict upon us?

For starters, Labor's current trading licensing system resulted in—as just one example from my home state of Tasmania—a substantial increase in the freight rates experienced by Bell Bay Aluminium. It recorded a 63 per cent increase in freight costs in one year—a cost of approximately $4 million per annum. And Bell Bay Aluminium provides the jobs, the household income, for 435 of my fellow Tasmanians. In the past, the Labor Party used to champion the blue-collar workers whose livelihood we on this side are trying to champion and support. Indeed, the Australian Greens, allegedly concerned about the environment, would know that the process of making aluminium is highly energy dependent. In Tasmania we make that with clean hydro.

Debate interrupted.