smh.com.au - The Sydney Morning HeraldBy John Garnaut August 8, 2003
Paying foreign shipping crews foreign wages while working Australian waters, a cost-cutting scheme defended by the Howard Government, was sinking fast after a union victory yesterday. In a unanimous decision, the High Court ruled that two Canadian-controlled, Bahamas-registered and Ukrainian-crewed ships working in domestic waters fall under the jurisdiction of an Australian tribunal. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission may now consider an application for the crews of the cement cargo vessel CSL Pacific to be protected by Australian pay and conditions. If the commission accepts the application - which lawyers yesterday said was likely - the ship's owner, CSL Group, could be forced to lift wages for its foreign workers from $19,600 to the local rate of $52,100 while carting cargo between domestic ports. * * * * CSL bought the two ships from the Government-owned shipping line ANL. The decision is the climax in a long-running controversy involving Canadian politics, Caribbean tax havens and international wage and safety standards. The CSL Group was owned by Paul Martin, a controversial former Canadian finance minister before he passed ownership to his sons earlier this year. * * * * Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
