Shipping Australia has raised several concerns with the new Transport Security Amendment (Security of Australia’s Transport Sector) Bill 2024 in a formal Parliamentary submission.
As our submission’s a bit on the weighty side, we have summarized a few of the main points.
We are concerned about a number of aspects of the Bill including…
- duplication / overlapping security regimes – there is a vast and detailed range of international-shipping imposed security obligations ranging from the very top-most level of maritime law and policy down to down to detailed obligations and protocols. There is also a range of existing security legislation (the SOCI) reforms that have passed recently. Apart from obvious issues of wasted time, effort, costs, there can be problems with a lack of inter-regime harmony. The have situations in which different rulesets, interpretations of rules, or compliance methodologies, conflict in respect of the same situation. For instance, (in a non-security situation), there have been examples of ships having received Federal biosecurity clearance to enter Australian waters based on informed and substantive grounds assessment, only to be turned away by State authorities on narrow or state-specific rules.
- additional reporting requirements – there is already a lot of paperwork imposed on shipping companies (and, yes, on other international trade businesses too), and this costs, and it costs a lot. These things are called “trade transaction costs” or “trade-transport costs” in econo-wonk speak. Trade transaction costs related to border procedures vary by circumstances / context / situation and academic studies suggest that directly and indirectly incurred trade transaction costs each amount to anywhere between one percent to 15 percent of the value of traded goods. A reduction in trade transaction costs of 1% of the value of world trade, then aggregate welfare gains are estimated at about USD$40 billion worldwide, with everyone benefiting. Meanwhile, the IMO reckons that improved trade facilitation measures could result in a 3.7% cut in maritime transport costs. Here, in Australia, where economic policy-makers are gravely worried about falling Australian productivity, along comes a proposal to saddle industry with yet more trade transaction costs.
- draconian, overly-broad, over-the-top criminal offences – there are some pretty sweepingly broad criminal offences in this new legislation affecting whole swathes of people in relation to security incidents. Basically, anyone who works in a maritime industry-type of business is potentially being exposed to criminal liability with some pretty hefty fines if they are aware of an incident and don’t report it. Is it really the Parliament’s intention to impose criminal liability for non-reporting on the most junior employee who has just joined the workforce after leaving full time education and who somehow becomes aware of a cyber-security incident? Or upon a person who spends his / her days cleaning a facility? Or any other employee in the workforce who may have become aware of the incident and is then theoretically obligated to report? How would such employees, who would not be maritime operations experts, even be able to assess how likely it is that a maritime transport security incident would likely have a significant impact?. And, to make matters worse, there appears to be a double penalty type situation of being penalised twice for the same behaviour. And, to make matters worse, it’s a strict liability offence – so even accidents are criminalised. This is not good. This is all too much. And it ought to be revised and it ought not to pass into law.
There’s a lot more we could say, and did, in fact, say in our submission – which you can read here alongside a range of other submissions from notable maritime and trade companies.
