Australia seeks support to increase spill liability

Mr Albanese revealed Australia's International Maritime Organization (IMO) push at the weekend when responding to Swire Shipping's $25m settlement of the Pacific Adventurer spill.

"The Australian Government has submitted a paper to the International Maritime Organization to have a proposal to increase the liability limits under the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims (LLMC) added to the agenda of the relevant IMO committee in October," the spokeswoman said.

"This is the standard process by which amendments to conventions are initiated in the IMO.

"As shown by the Pacific Adventurer incident, the liability limits set under the LLMC proved inadequate to cover the costs of the oil spill clean-up.

"The Australian proposal would require agreement from other countries who are also parties to LLMC and to this end the government will be seeking support from them.

"If added to the agenda, the proposal will be considered at the next available meeting in 2010."

While shipping and insurance observers gave marks to Australia for going through the IMO, they were less positive about the political pressure brought to bear on Swire to pay above what was legally required.

They claimed Australia had effectively moved the goal posts and had reneged on what it had agreed to when signing up to the LLMC.