Letter to The West Australian This federal government, through Assistant Immigration Minister Michael-ia Cash, has informed the offshore petroleum industry employer representative group, the Australian Mines and Metals Association (AMMA) of their policy to remove all Australian workers from the offshore oil and gas industry. To the delight of AMMA. Cash says that these (pipe-laying) vessels “get in, we do not have the workers here, and they get out”, and that the foreign workforce are “so highly skilled”. She said the requirement for the guest workers to hold a 457 visa is “unnecessary red tape” and it is “holding up the oil and gas industry”. This is rhetoric from a government in the interests of the multinational corporations. Let’s look at the jobs in question. They are welders, riggers, divers, ROV personnel, crane operators, seafarers and others. We have those! Australian seafarers are internationally regarded as among the best in the world, and have been manning these projects for decades. Furthermore, these vessels are routinely contracted to work on the Australian coast for many months, often several years. There have been allegations made by AMMA and others that the maritime workforce is responsible for recent cost blowouts in regard to the Gorgon project in the state’s North West. This has been part of a campaign to alienate the offshore workforce from the public, and has been refuted by Chevron CEO, John Watson, who distanced himself from the claims and said that unions were not to blame for the cost blowouts. There have been studies completed by both BIS Shrapnel and the University of Sydney that have concluded that the maritime wages for this project represented less than one percent of the overall cost. This is very unlikely to have contributed to a blowout of some $17 Billion, or 46% for that project. The University of Sydney report goes into what DID cause the blowout, which I won’t go into here. Incidentally, Chevron’s NET income for 2013 was $21.42Billion US (NYSE). The loss to the local economy will potentially be significant. The Australian workers live here, pay tax here, and spend their earnings here. So to give the multinationals the ability to bring workers onto our coast en masse, will forfeit many of the benefits to our community, as well as adding pressures to families with all the negative flow on effects this can have. The removal of an Australian workforce, simply because they are Australian and that cheaper labour can be found else ware is a betrayal of the hardworking people in an entire industry. The move is an opportunistic one, made so by the nature of the industry and specifically by the fact that the foreign workers do not need to set foot on Australian soil. They come in on the vessel, carry out the operation and remain on the vessel. This is unseen by the public, but the ramifications, economic and social are none the less significant. There are other important factors in play here of course. The increased likelihood of environmental accidents is one, and these projects are increasingly located around sensitive areas. Ningaloo Reef and Barrow Island are two of them. These are Australian resources, and to deny Australian workers and future generations the benefit that the employment and training on the respective projects provide is short sighted and ideological extremism.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 00:58:50 +0000
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