|
representatives vote 2018-08-15#3
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2023-06-16 12:23:19
|
Title
Bills — Coastal Trading (Revitalising Australian Shipping) Amendment Bill 2017; Consideration in Detail- Coastal Trading (Revitalising Australian Shipping) Amendment Bill 2017 - Consideration in Detail - Put the question
Description
<p class="speaker">Anthony Albanese</p><p>I move amendment (1) as circulated in my name:</p><p class="italic">(1) Schedule 1, items 5 and 6, page 4 (lines 8 to 21), omit the items.</p><p>Amendment (1) relates to the issue of acceptable tolerance limits. The current act establishes acceptable tolerance limits for temporary licence voyages being plus or minus 20 per cent for the nominated cargo passenger volumes and plus or minus five days for the authorised loading date, without the shipper needing to seek a variation to their temporary licence. If required, a variation must be approved by the minister within two business days. What the bill proposes is to increase the volume tolerance limits to 200 per cent more or 100 per cent less. It also proposes a loading window tolerance of 30 days either side of the authorised dates. This has very serious implications for whether the Australian industry around our coast can literally survive. If you had listened to the speeches of those opposite, you would have thought that the only issue to do with shipping around our coast was about superyachts; it's actually about the capacity of Australian flagged vessels to exist, taking resources and goods around our coastline.</p><p>These changes would further deregulate what is already one of the world's most liberal coastal trading regimes. To put that in some context, in the United States, under the Jones Act, if you want coastal trading to exist around the coast of the US—if you have goods in San Francisco you want to take to Los Angeles or goods in Miami that you want to take to New York—then you have to use an American flagged vessel with an American crew, 100 per cent. They have a completely protectionist regime. Australia doesn't have that, and Labor certainly isn't proposing that that would be appropriate. But it is appropriate that we have a regime that allows Australian flagged vessels to have an opportunity to continue to exist.</p><p>The proposed amendments in this legislation, which the amendment I've moved this afternoon would remove, would make it almost impossible for a general licensed vessel to contest work, because their owner-operator would never know the actual volume or the precise loading date. To be clear, I say to the minister that they wouldn't know what the loading date was, so how can you bid for work as an Australian contractor if you don't know, within 30 days, what the date of that voyage would be and you also don't know what the actual volume of goods for that task that you are seeking would be?</p><p>Let us look at what the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers said in a submission to the discussion paper not of this minister and not of his predecessor as minister but of the minister before that—Minister Chester. That's how long this legislation has been around, in limbo, because it is orphaned legislation, to be frank. No-one wants to be associated with it. I'm not surprised that the current minister's been put in an unfortunate position, but he has an opportunity to say, 'Yes, I'm better than my predecessor.' That's not a big call, I say to the minister. 'And I'm even better than the minister before that, because, as a member of the National Party, I'm going to stand up for Australian businesses.' AIMPE said:</p><p class="italic">The ultimate voyage carried out may bear no resemblance to the original voyage for which the Temporary Licence was granted.</p><p>AIMPE are right in their submission, and that is why this amendment should be carried. <i>(Time expired)</i></p> <p class="speaker">Michael McCormack</p><p>I thank the member for Grayndler, the shadow minister for transport and infrastructure, for his comments. I just wanted to assure him that the departure of vessels has occurred under Labor's process. During debate on this particular bill, my colleague the member for Grey provided the House with details on the decline of Australian flagged vessels. He informed the House that, in 2012, the then Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, when introducing legislation for the current act, said it was designed to ensure the Australian shipping industry survived. In 2012, there were 30 ships; now, in 2018, there are just 13. That reduction was under the act that the member for Grayndler said would protect Australian shipping. Combined with this, many ageing Australian vessels are not being replaced. The average age of the registered fleet, all 13 of them, is 24 years, up from 23 last year. The oldest vessel is 26 years old in comparison to the average age of 13 years for international vessels. We have an ageing fleet.</p><p>The bill maintains the current requirements for Australian flagged vessels to be consulted and bid for work before a temporary licence voyage is undertaken. It doesn't impose any additional or onerous requirements on Australian flagged vessels. It's important to note that these reforms will not take away any of the protections provided to Australian flagged vessels operating under general licences. Australian licensed vessels will still have unrestricted access to the Australian coast and the opportunity to contest voyages applied for by foreign ships. They will continue to access shipping tax incentives, including the ability to claim income tax exemptions for qualifying shipping activities. As I stated in my summing up speech, there will be accelerated depreciation for certain owners of vessels and rollover relief for eligible Australian shipowners. All of the departures and reflaggings which have occurred since this act came into force have taken place under the regime that the Australian Labor Party established. This government has made no changes to that regime and has issued no directions to the department on how to administer the legislation.</p><p>I want to tell the House that Australian seafarer jobs have been declining and will likely continue to decline under the current framework. However, the reforms in the bill will create the potential for more onshore jobs to offset those continued seafarer job losses by making coastal shipping a more attractive and more affordable transport alternative. Input costs for the manufacturing industry will be reduced. This should support job growth in this sector. By bringing the movement of liquid fuel products from offshore facilities under the coastal trading act, refineries could become more competitive, allowing for job growth in this sector. There is also potential for, as I stated before, Australia's dry-docking industry to grow.</p><p>The amendments in this bill—the original reforms—will make no change to the pay and conditions of seafarers, and that is important to note. The reforms do not alter the workforce entitlements of Australian seafarers, to whom part A of the Seagoing Industry Award 2010, the modern award, will continue to apply. Nor do they alter the coverage of foreign seafarers. For seafarers on foreign flagged vessels, the wages and conditions currently set out in part B of the Seagoing Industry Award 2010 will continue to apply from the third voyage of their ship onwards in Australian waters over a 12-month period. By recording the IMO number of vessels being used, additional information will be available to determine when those entitlements are payable. This is good reform. We've talked about it for long enough and it's time for this reform to take place.</p> <p class="speaker">Anthony Albanese</p><p>The problem with the minister's contribution is that he didn't address the issues that are confronted in the amendment that I'm moving to omit schedule 1, items 5 and 6 on page 4, lines 8 to 21 of the legislation—changing the tolerance limits. The minister said that Australian flagged vessels would still have the capacity to compete. That's right. They would have the capacity to bid. They just wouldn't know what they were bidding for, because the tolerance limit is being changed to allow 200 per cent more than what was being asked for. Think about this: there is a contract to carry this book across, but it could be 100 per cent less, so it could just be half a book, or it could be three books.</p><p>That's the difference in terms of the tolerance limits between the contract that is being put out. It's not hard. It's a version of 200 per cent more or 100 per cent less for the volume of product being asked to be moved. Not just that, but here we are on 15 August and you put in a bid to make your ship available to take maybe one, two or three tonnes of goods. You make the ship available, with the crew, with access to the particular port, and you take it up to Townsville, because it is goods to be taken from Townsville down to Brisbane. But when you get there, the ship isn't going on 15 August, and it's not going on 16 August, 17 August or 18 or 19 or 20 August. In the meantime you're paying your staff and crew and paying your port costs, because the variation in when the actual voyage will take place can be 30 days.</p><p>That's why you don't have to listen to the union that I quoted before, the engineers' union. Listen to the employers. Maritime Industry Australia Ltd, the peak industry body, said:</p><p class="italic">Without the tolerances being meaningful (and remembering that these were expanded by the 2012 reforms from 10% and three days to 20% and five days) the system may as well be deregulated entirely.</p><p>The industry itself is saying that if this legislation is not amended they won't be able to be in business. That's what they're saying, and common sense tells us that that's the case. Think about someone transporting grain or agricultural produce in your electorate, Minister. If I put out a contract saying, 'Can you take a hundred head of cattle from Wagga Wagga to Newcastle port, but you mightn't have to take it today,' and the contract says 15 August and it will be a hundred head, but when you get there it's 15 September that the trucks are going to go, and there's 300 head of cattle, not 100 head, and you've got your truck there—how can you possibly compete on that basis? And the minister spoke about no directions to the department. They gutted the department! The entire shipping section got shoved off to other departments. They got rid of any expertise, so you had departmental officers approving temporary licences for the <i>Portland</i>to replace the MV <i>Portland</i>to go on one journey from Portland in Victoria around to Western Australia and back again. Minister, you should reconsider this position, because it's just wrong. You don't have to listen to the unions, listen to the industry itself.</p> <p class="speaker">Kevin Hogan</p><p>The question is that the amendment be agreed to. I call the member for Grayndler.</p> <p class="speaker">Anthony Albanese</p><p>I quoted the industry body before. I'll now quote the Maritime Union of Australia:</p><p class="italic">Such open-ended tolerance provisions would totally undermine accepted commercial arrangements and make it impossible for a GL [general licence] holder to contest a cargo, as the GL holder would not know what they are contesting. The ability to position a ship when the loading date could vary by up to 30 days would be commercially untenable for a GL holder, as would be the unknown nature of the cargo volume.</p><p>The operators of vessels around the coast have been unanimous in their positions where they have expressed concern about these changes. That includes CSL, which currently owns three Australian flagged vessels operating around the coastline. ANL said: 'the current date tolerance seems reasonable'.</p><p>The other issue is that of the impact on Australian based tourism cruise operators. From those opposite we hear about superyachts. In my earlier contribution to the debate I said that I'm happy to sit down with the minister and talk constructively about ways in which we can change customs regimes and improve access for superyachts, because I agree that there is potential for growth in that industry. What I'm not prepared to do is destroy the entire coastal shipping industry in the interests of the superyacht industry, which is based essentially in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.</p><p>But those opposite exposed what drives them when they had two issues really that they raised continuously. Even the minister, in his summing up, spoke more about superyachts than he did about the actual resources sector, the agriculture sector or other sectors that take trade around our coast. There's an Australian cruise ship industry that's worried about these provisions as well. This is what True North Adventure Cruises have had to say, through Mr Bill Milby, the operator of the tourism vessels off north-west Western Australia, on regional jobs. He's warned that the proposed changes to the tolerance limits would allow foreign operators to game the system. This is what he said in his submission:</p><p class="italic">The purpose of temporary licences was to allow foreign ships to carry cargo and passengers in the event that cargo or passengers were already waiting at a port to be shipped from one destination to another.</p><p class="italic">This amendment allows foreign ships to apply for and be granted a temporary licence when there is no cargo or passengers, thus allowing the foreign ship to wait at any port and choose to bid against any general licence holder at any time.</p><p>What you have here is an Australian based industry—Coral Sea Expeditions, which operates primarily around Far North Queensland, and True North Adventure Cruises, operating out of the Kimberley—saying that these provisions will result in a loss of Australian jobs and a loss of Australian economic activity.</p><p>When Mr Milby raised this question originally, when these sorts of provisions were in the act put forward by former minister Warren Truss, which were rejected in the Senate, he was told: 'What you should do is take the Australian flag off your ship, reflag it with a foreign flag and replace your Australian crew with a foreign crew being paid foreign wages. That's the way in which you can continue to compete.' That is explicitly what they said. And today, in his one contribution to the debate about this amendment, the minister said that seafarer jobs would continue to be in decline. Well, why is it, Minister, that for an island continent you are promoting legislation that you say will result in a decline in jobs for Australian seafarers? There are real implications behind that. I think you're better than that, and you can do better than this legislation.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
- The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2018-08-15.125.7):
- > *That the question be now put.*
- This means that debate will end and the House will instead vote on [the question](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/divisions/representatives/2018-08-15/4) immediately.
-
-
|