Senator COONAN (7:39 PM) —The Australian waterfront has long been the source of many stories about low hours, high pay, pilfering and general rorting of the system. We have heard of people signing on for work and then going home only to be paid for full shifts at huge hourly rates that make a mockery of wage restraint. But the report in Saturday's Daily Telegraph headed `Strip show shifts cargo' is nothing short of life imitating art. It revealed that a team of night shift waterfront workers in Western Australia achieved world's best practice container rates of about 30 an hour on one day about two months ago. The reason for this sudden uplift in productivity was that there was a strip show on at the local pub that some of the workers wanted to attend.

I think it underscores the fact that the performance on our waterfront is, to put it bluntly, abysmal. Australia has one of the worst performance records in the world and this shocking record is costing the country dearly. A survey by the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce shows that Australian business is losing $1 billion a year because of the standard of our waterfront performance. One billion dollars a year is a lot of money.

Senator Ellison —Amazing; huge.

Senator COONAN —It is not hard to see why, Senator Ellison, when you consider that Sydney's container terminals have managed to reach a crane rate of about 18 containers an hour for the first time ever. The New South Wales Labor government has whipped its mates in the stevedoring industry over the head with a feather over this performance. It entered into a secret agreement with the Maritime Union of Australia to minimise strikes. But such is the contempt this union has even for its Labor mates in New South Wales that this protocol has already been breached. It has left more than 4,000 containers stranded, a number of which are filled with flour which is aid for Syria and other countries in the Middle East. In this dispute the crane rate has dropped to 10 an hour.

The situation in Sydney is that the wharfies are thumbing their noses even at their mates—as I say, Premier Bob Carr. They are demanding a guaranteed minimum, not average, wage of $75,000 per annum. They also want a base weekly wage of $712 for the calculation of superannuation entitlements. I ask rhetorically: just whom do these people think they are?

Mind you, Sydney is not the worst Australian port. Brisbane has yet to get to 18 containers an hour. Port Adelaide boasts the best performance in Australia with a paltry 21 containers an hour. It is a sad reflection of the level of our productivity when a level of 21 containers an hour is regarded as being something to be proud of. Just across the Tasman we have a rate of 25 containers an hour, while Thailand has 29 an hour and the Philippines has 30 an hour.

The wharfies are quite adamant that there is no productivity problem on this country's waterfront. They say you cannot compare Australia's performance with that of other countries because overseas ports overstate their performance. When you have this sort of attitude it is not hard to see why attempts by this government to speak reasonably with the wharfies have been unsuccessful.

The argument goes on to be contradicted. Wharfies have claimed that, if there is any problem with productivity, it is because the equipment is old. So on the one hand they are saying there is no problem and on the other hand they are saying there might be a problem. Their argument for the `might be' scenario does not really stack up as most of the equipment is new and state of the art.

Then there have been attempts to set a benchmark with the unions. The union will allow a benchmark only with an Australian port because, as you will remember from my earlier comments, those overseas ports actually overstate their productivity, according to the unions. So we cannot have any uncomfortable comparisons, can we?

So Australia is actually left with poor service and a service that is certainly not cheap. Container handling charges are a major contributor to our high waterfront charges, much greater than for any port in New Zealand or in Asia, and they are getting more expensive. Earlier this month charges for containers bound for Europe rose because of stevedoring costs. The new charges will add about $1 million to the cost of exports.

The shocking performance in container terminals is jeopardising this country's wellbeing, particularly as containerised cargo represents 60 per cent of the value of our imports and 30 per cent of the value of our exports. The unions who are the root cause of this problem are being paid a king's ransom.

Let us make no mistake about how well-off these wharfies are. These are not your average Australians battling to make a living. They are not your average Australians who agree to wage restraint in the interests of other workers. No, they are nothing less than bludgers who will go to astonishing lengths to exploit the system. And it is costing average Australians dearly. The costs they impose on the waterfront, of course, have to be passed on to the community.

The rorts are blatant. Take the wharfies with Patrick stevedoring in Newcastle. At present, they are working two days in five but are being paid for three days on which they do not turn up. If someone actually volunteers to come to work, he has to be paid time and a half. There are many practices that I would like to go into but I will not have time.

The New Zealand experience is very similar to that of Australia. In New Zealand waterfront reform was brought about when a port was closed for 34 days. When it was reopened the closed shop was actually broken. In Australia the farmers have replaced the loggers in New Zealand who actually opened up the waterfront. This government has done much to implement trade practices reforms that have strengthened and enhanced competition.