Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

That is right. I had strong opinions about that part of her answer as well, and she has also done it in doorstops today. The minister wants to equate overseas students on the apprenticeship visa with overseas students coming in to study at universities. They are completely different. When overseas students come in you can make extra places available for them. We take issue with the extent to which places have been cut and the fact that not enough places have been made available to Australians, but you can provide overseas students with opportunities at university without cutting opportunities for Australians—it is possible to do that. But you cannot just add on extra places at TAFE, because every apprenticeship demands two things: a TAFE position and an employer able to take on an apprentice, and there will always be a finite number of employers able to do that. What that means is that in every instance with this visa we are going to see an opportunity that could have been taken by a young Australian being denied to them. That is a completely different scenario to just adding on places at university. Yet we have a minister for immigration who says that you can equate the two and it is the same sort of system.

The minister responsible can only have reached that conclusion for one reason: she does not understand the difference between university places and apprenticeships. That has been made clear in her media comments today. Therefore, because of a complete lack of understanding, we end up in a situation where we have the bad policy which is before us today and which Labor is seeking to have abolished. The visa will have two impacts, and I referred to them earlier. It will take opportunities away from young Australians and it will drive wages down. As far as taking opportunities away from young Australians is concerned, this is all in the context of some 300,000 people having been turned away from TAFE since 1998. We have the problem of young Australians, wanting precisely the opportunities that are being afforded to others through this visa, being turned away and missing out on those opportunities.

Today the minister made the comment that the trade skills training visa was designed to boost the viability of the regional apprenticeship training providers in the same way that universities have benefited from overseas students. That shows the absolute misunderstanding of what is before us. But there have been two other occasions, once in this House and once in the other place, where information has been given which was patently wrong. On 3 November last year, the then Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs said this:

This visa will not—I repeat: will not—disadvantage any young Australian wishing to become an apprentice.

He went on to say:

Employers are bound and have to make every attempt to get an apprenticeship locally—in fact, they have to prove that they are unable to get an apprentice locally.

Not true—simply not true. In the same way, Minister Vanstone misled the Senate today. She misled the Senate with these words:

... the regional certifying bodies, the people in the local area, will have to certify that an Australian was not available to take up the position.

Have a look at the forms they have to fill out. There are 50 questions that an employer has to answer, and not one of them even asks whether they advertised the position locally. Yet the minister today said that they have to certify that an Australian was not available to take up the position.

What they do have to certify at the end of form 1267—and think about the definition of the word ‘reasonably’ in this—is that ‘the apprenticeship vacancy cannot reasonably be filled locally’, with no proof having to be supplied, without having any reference to whether or not it was actually advertised, without having any reference to the extent to which checking was done—and then also having to certify things like whether or not it was on the skills shortage list. The skills shortage list deals with people at the end of an apprenticeship. This does nothing to fix that, because you have every likelihood at the end of an apprenticeship that the people who have taken these on will return to the country from which they came. So we as a nation provide an apprenticeship position, have it occupied for the life of the apprenticeship and at the end of it in many cases the skills crisis is no better off at all because that skill then goes back offshore.

So what we have are these regional certifying bodies being asked to make an assessment without having to check whether or not an apprenticeship was advertised locally. Mind you, I do not think advertising locally is enough in itself. I said this morning and I will say again: if you cannot fill a position locally, if you are having trouble filling a position in Ballarat, you ought to check in Bendigo, in Brisbane, in Blacktown, in Bankstown as to whether or not people want to take that opportunity. The minister has this bizarre concept in her head that it is completely reasonable that, to get an apprenticeship, people will be willing to travel halfway across the world but people will not be willing to travel from one town in Australia to another, so we do not need to check with them and we do not even need to check with the locality in which the position is being made available. The minister says that they have to certify that an Australian was not available to take the position but, if she wants that to be the rule, I say this: put it on the form. Put it on the form if that is what you believe, but do not get out there and say to the parliament that is what they have to check and then produce forms, available on the internet for everyone to see, where that question is not even asked. We will see young Australians being denied opportunities from this.

By the way, who are the bodies that have to certify whether or not they had trouble filling this position? You go on the web to the list of regional certifying bodies and some of them, occupying this completely independent role, are the local chambers of commerce. The local chamber of commerce is being asked to certify for one of their own members whether or not they are going to have trouble filling the vacancy! We can see exactly how this will unfold on the ground.

We also see that the areas where youth unemployment is at its highest are the areas this visa applies to. We all know from the regional members of this parliament that in regional Australia youth unemployment is at its worst, and they are the exact areas where this government is proposing to take opportunities away from young Australians. All of Tasmania is counted as part of regional Australia and yet, in the greater Hobart area, you have 26.5 per cent youth unemployment. In the Richmond-Tweed area, there is 36.8 per cent youth unemployment—yet these are the areas they decide to focus on to allow young Australians to miss out on apprenticeship opportunities. In the Loddon Mallee statistical region, there is 32.2 per cent youth unemployment; in Gippsland, 27.8 per cent; in Queensland’s south and east Moreton, 25 per cent; in north Adelaide, 27.5 per cent; and in southern Adelaide, 31 per cent. The areas they are targeting are where young people are already doing it toughest. They are the areas where young people want these sorts of opportunities. Yet, instead of saying, ‘Let’s put a bit of effort into matching the young people to the opportunities that are there,’ they say, ‘Well, let’s just send these positions offshore.’

It is also going to drive down wages, and let us not forget the context of the industrial relations laws of last year. The Treasurer said in an interview on 17 November last year on 4BC:

This is, I think, an important point to bear in mind. In an economy which is performing well, where unemployment is low, whatever you happen to be working as you have got more bargaining power and more strength than you have in an economy which is performing badly and unemployment is high …

Well, guess what? The moment you are competing with a global market for apprenticeship wages, the issue of what the local employment and unemployment levels are becomes utterly irrelevant—because you do not have the bargaining power that at the end of last year the government wanted to guarantee would be available to people, because they decided to globalise the work market at the same time. I do not think it is any accident that this visa was introduced at the same time that those industrial relations laws came in. And we are going to see the very simple situation where a young person being offered a job under this visa scheme does not just face the horrible situation that young Australians face when they are offered an AWA. It is not just a case of ‘Accept the contract or reject the job’; it is a case of ‘Accept the contract or reject the job and miss out on the visa.’ There is no negotiating power in this. These employees are going to find themselves completely vulnerable, and that has an effect on every other Australian who is lucky enough to get an apprenticeship because they then have to compete with the new low base rate for wages. That is how this is going to unfold.

Labor has a very simple policy on this: train Australians first and train Australians now. That is actually the government’s job. It is not the government’s job to take away opportunities; it is the government’s job to create opportunities and make them available for young Australians. They are being denied opportunities through this visa. It is bad policy. It has not been well thought out. Even today, with the comments she has made, the minister has made it clear she does not understand how it works. Labor says simply, ‘Don’t just amend the visa: this one ought to go.’

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