Hon Chairperson, the Maritime Labour Convention seeks to ensure comprehensive world-wide protection of the rights of seafarers. The convention is also sometimes called the Seafarers' Bill of Rights. It establishes a level playing field for countries and shipowners committed to providing decent working and living conditions for seafarers and protecting them from unfair competition on the part of substandard ships. The convention sets out seafarers' right to decent working conditions and a wide range of subjects, and aims to be globally applicable, easily understood, readily updatable and uniformly enforced.
It has been designed to become a global instrument known as the fourth pillar of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, complementing the key conventions of the International Maritime Organisation, IMO. I therefore put the Maritime Labour Convention before the House to be approved.
There was no debate.
Maritime Labour Convention 2006 approved.