Sadly, whilst the above are commonplace, you may be surprised to learn that the greatest wage theft scams in this country occur just off our ports. The victims are international seafarers sailing on ships owned by massive multinational corporations and registered in third world tax havens with minimal regulation and no protections of workers' rights. This week a bombshell report was released exposing the depth, breadth and consequences of this cancer in our maritime industry and it isn't a pretty picture.

The "Robbed at Sea" report, undertaken by the Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work was commissioned by the Australian Shipping Inspectorate of the International Transport Workers Federation, and is based on data from 5000 ship inspections between 2012 and 2022. The take home message? Seventy per cent of ships inspected failed the minimum international standards for wage payments and the average underpayment per ship was $11,500. But the inspections represent just 2.5 per cent of all ships visiting Australian waters. In other words just the tip of the iceberg.

The study concluded that the actual damage from wage theft at sea over the past decade is likely to be far higher and in the order of billions of dollars in stolen wages and millions of dollars right here in Port Kembla. Hardly an oversight or a case of a few bad apples, it has become systematic. We also know from the ITF's inspections that living conditions aboard these vessels are often appalling and unsafe.

So how do these companies, which generate billions of dollars in profit, get away with operating in Australian coastal waters stealing their workers' wages? The former Liberal government, for the last decade has allowed these multinationals to operate foreign flagged vessels on 'temporary licences' to break the law and effectively pay slave rates. Last year 60 per cent of the Australian Coastal Shipping trade used these 'temporary' licences to effectively avoid Australian workplace laws.

The big losers from these crooked arrangements are the foreign workers themselves who are the victims of a modern slavery racket. The Australian community also suffers, as we have been deprived of our own shipping industry and Australian workers have been denied the opportunity to continue the proud tradition of working as seafarers on our island continent. Action and policy reform needs to be taken now to rebuild the Australian Shipping industry at a time when our economy needs the certainty of skilled local labour, our community needs the benefit of these local jobs that pay local taxes and our national security needs our local eyes and ears working the Australian Coastal routes.

Such a policy exists in many countries around the world and it has a name, it's called Cabotage and it's long overdue in Australia.