He and the Maritime Union’s Mick Cross, as well as recently unemployed maritime workers, were at unionists’ newly-established “Australian Jobs Embassy” at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday, where campaigners will stay to protest against the sending of Australian jobs overseas.

“The purpose is to speak out with a very loud and united voice, that what is happening to these seafarers and maritime workers is happening to workers in every other industry in Australia, albeit by other means,” Mr Rorris said.

“That is, job security is going and being replaced by cheap and exploitative overseas labour. 

“The purpose of a jobs embassy is a voice for workers, to say this is our representative voice.

“And we’ll be here for as long as it takes for our Government to respect the people that elected them, and start to respect the rights of workers to some job security in their own country.”