AS the world’s largest island nation, Australia has had a long and proud record as a seafaring country, with about three-quarters of our international trade conducted by sea.
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Nowadays, though, our presence in international shipping is virtually non-existent, and Australian crews on domestic shipping runs are also under immense pressure, as a recent series of high-profile waterfront skirmishes have shown.
In a speech to federal parliament in October, Labor transport spokesman Anthony Albanese described the Coalition government’s planned changes to domestic shipping as “WorkChoices on water”, and an absolute contrast to the Jones Act employed employed by the United States to ensure the security of that nation’s domestic shipping industry – and its seafarers.
From its perspective, the federal Coalition says the existing laws, introduced by Labor in 2012, have “torpedoed the industry”.
“Unless we act now to correct these failings, businesses relying on coastal shipping will be sunk forever,” the then Nationals leader, Warren Truss, said last year.
The government has been unable to win support for its legislation, and a Senate inquiry into “the use of so-called Flag of Convenience (FOC) shipping in Australia” is due to report its findings on Thursday.
In a submission to the inquiry, the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development said substantial progress had been made since the 1992 Ships of Shame inquiry – an internationally influential investigation chaired by the Hunter’s own Peter Morris. It said existing frameworks were sufficient to deal with any environmental or security concerns raised by foreign and FOC ships. The Maritime Union of Australia, holding a protest featuring “Slick the Oily Surfer” at Nobbys Beach on Sunday, is not so sure.
Inevitably, any increase in foreign crewing will come at the expense of Australian seafarers, but the government argues that cheaper freight costs and greater competition between shipping companies will lead to increased business opportunities for Australian traders.
There are no simple answers to situations such as these: the responses of both sides are as much about ideology as they are economics. But for Australia’s domestic seafarers, the global embrace of free trade really is a race to the bottom.
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