Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to join with the Maritime Union of Australia, the Maritime Industry Australia Limited and Ports Australia in calling for greater recognition of maritime workers as essential workers during this long-running COVID pandemic. As colleagues would be aware, the Labor Party has been working as cooperatively as possible with the government to keep our communities safe and our supply chains operating as efficiently and as freely as possible. However, to keep these vital transport linkages open, get goods on our shelves and get Australia's exports to market the government needs to do more to recognise and support the essential work of our seafarers and maritime workers. Labor has been calling on the government to recognise that maritime workers are essential since March of last year.

As recently as the meeting of national cabinet on Friday last week there was an announcement of the streamlining of COVID-19 measures for the land based freight industry. However, yet again nothing was done to recognise the vital role played by maritime transport. As MIAL said last week: 'Planes, trains and automobiles but no ships.' Our maritime workers still face hard borders when moving from state to state. International seafarers are often stranded working on vessels for over 20 months at a time because shore leave and crew changes are no longer facilitated. At the moment, frontline maritime workers in Australia are often unable to work, subjected to repeated periods in quarantine—in addition to their already long stints at sea. And businesses can't plan when workers will be available and whether their goods will arrive on time.

The government seems to think that our shelves will remain fully stacked as if by magic. Our national and international maritime workers play a vital role in keeping our economy moving and it's about time government recognised that and gave them essential worker status.