Tony Abbott denies North Star Cruises' claims that Australian workers are planned to be substituted with foreigners

Prime Minister Tony Abbott denied claims made by luxury adventure cruise company North Star Cruise Australia (NSCA) that a senior government bureaucrat has suggested to substitute its Australian workforce with foreign workers. The NSCA, which operates in the Kimberley region, made the statement in a submitted document presented in a Senate inquiry reviewing the coalition’s deregulation of the shipping industry.

In its submission, the company said that it has been told by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development that, "If NSCA wanted to remain competitive with the foreign owned and crewed ships it should consider taking our ship 'True North' off the Australian Shipping Register, re-register the ship in a suitable foreign country, lay off our Australian crew and hire a cheaper foreign crew."

Abbott said that the allegations are not true and that his government is aiming at restoring the system which once operated under the Howard government and put an end to the job-destroying and cost-inflating strategies followed by the Labor.

“As a result of changes that the former government made to the rules governing Australian coastal shipping, the Australian coastal shipping fleet halved from 30 ships to 15 ships under Labor's watch," he told ABC News. “Costs for Australian shipping increased by almost 65 per cent in the first year of Labor's changes and the percentage of Australian freight carried by shipping in Labor's term of office, between 2007 and 2013 dropped from 27 per cent to 17 per cent. Labor were absolutely catastrophic for coastal shipping and for jobs in coastal shipping."

Bill Milby, the representative for North Star Cruises, told ABC that there is no question of competitiveness since the foreign workers are paid 50 percent less than their Australian counterparts. Opposition transport spokesperson Anthony Albanese said that the legislation is capable of destroying the entire Australian shipping sector.

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