Two months after Caltex sacked 36 Australian workers from the petrol tanker Alexander Spirit, saying there wasn't enough work for the ship in Australia, the vessel is back going between ports in Queensland and the Northern Territory with an all-foreign crew. 
The tanker was due to leave port at Townsville at 4pm on Wednesday bound for Cairns and then Groote Eylandt, 600 kilometres from Darwin.
Foreign ship crews, often made up of Filipino and Indian nationals, are paid at wage rates as low as $2 an hour and do not receive superannuation.
The Abbott government is facing a political storm over its plans to open up domestic shipping to foreign-flagged vessels with all-foreign crews paid at the lower international rate.
Fairfax Media has revealed research which shows the move will slash the domestic seafarer industry from 1177 to just 88 mariners, a loss of 93 per cent of the workforce.
On Wednesday, Caltex spokesman Sam Collyer stressed the Alexander Spirit's appearance in Australian waters did not contradict the company's statements in   July when it directed ship owner Teekay to replace its Australian crew with international seafarers.
He said the tanker was dropping off imported petrol in Townsville, Cairns and Groote Eylandt and had not gone back to shipping Australian-made product around the east coast. It would continue to supply imported petrol to Australia. But a sacked Australian crew member, Andy Poynter, said that a representative of Teekay who came onboard during a sit-in by the crew in Devonport before its final journey, had said the ship was to redeploy for international work only. He said said none of the 36 crew had yet found a new job.
In   July, during the two week sit-in, Employment Minister Eric Abetz said that to suggest the workers were being made redundant in favour of overseas workers was "mischievous" and "disingenuous".
But critics, including the Maritime Union, have pointed to a succession of Australian-based ships switching crews ahead of the government's coastal shipping reforms being enacted.