Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This week, as we see our government members dust off their tuxedos and get into their ball gowns as they prepare to revel in 10 years of office, the Howard government’s true legacy is here today, going to be seen by everyone. This true legacy will start to be felt in all homes and businesses right across Australia. It is the case that this government’s legacy of skills shortages is hurting this country. This past decade has seen a systematic failure by the Howard government to provide the skills that this country needs. The Treasurer says that economic management is the hallmark of this government’s success. There is no doubt that he is trying to meekly stake his claim, to be remembered as the ‘almost could have been’ during this week’s marathon of gala dinners. Instead, of course, he should be telling the true story. He should know—and the two ministers at the table should know—that Australia’s current economic prosperity is built on an unprecedented commodity boom. That is what it is built on, but it is thinly papering over the real structural cracks in our economy.

We are receiving record prices for our resources, but at the same time our national trade deficit is at record levels. Our foreign debt is hurtling towards $500 billion. That is what this government has created, and at the same time Australia is in the midst of a burgeoning skills crisis that is preventing Australia from paying its way in the world. Instead of investing in Australia’s skills, the government’s only solution to the crisis is to import more skilled labour. Here is a fact for you: in 1996, when this government was elected, skilled migration comprised just 27,500 visas. This year the government will increase that figure to 97,500. Since 1996 the program has been cumulatively increased by 270,000 extra skilled migrants. Two hundred and seventy thousand extra skilled migrants have been brought into Australia since the government was elected and, at the same time, 300,000 Australians have been turned away from TAFE. Now, as a result of the measure that it is trying to put in place today, the government is opening a new door for imported apprentices to come into our workshops, our factories and our businesses.

This visa is fundamentally flawed, and I certainly am very pleased to be able to support the motion moved by the member for Watson, because these measures will not fix our skills crisis. In fact, the structure of the visa will only make it worse. This new visa has the potential to deny opportunities for apprenticeships. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs while he was speaking what the level of teenage unemployment was. Of course, he had no idea because the government do not care about Australian teenagers who want a full-time job or an apprenticeship. It is over 20 per cent and has been for a long time—and it is a lot worse in regional areas. What is the unemployment rate for teenagers in the Richmond-Tweed? It is nearly 37 per cent. Are you proud of that? In the Illawarra, where last week I visited the members for Throsby and Cunningham, it is 35.7 per cent. That is the disgrace of the Howard government.

We have 193,000 young people who are not in full-time education and not fully engaged in the labour market. They are our young people, they are our sons and daughters, who cannot get a job or an apprenticeship. And what is your answer? Bring them in from overseas. That is 193,000 15- to 19-year-olds who could be in an apprenticeship. Instead of trying to get these young Australians into limited training opportunities, this government is just opening the door to recruit apprentices overseas.

Of course we support skilled migration—we know how important it is to build Australia—but importing skills from overseas imposes a mutual obligation to train Australians, especially our young people. The Leader of the Opposition talked about Brumby’s Bakery in Queensland importing bakers from Vietnam because they could not get local workers. As the Leader of the Opposition said, the problem is that the Howard government does not think that these bakers’ skills are in demand. It not only refuses to provide the tool kit but also refuses to provide these young apprentice bakers with the Commonwealth Trade Learning Scholarship. So it is not the case that our young Australians are getting the support they need to be bakers. There are jobs going to people from overseas because this government will not help our kids get these apprenticeships. We are seeing this government turn its back on young Australians and on those apprentices who need that extra support to help them through. At the same time, of course, companies are being allowed to import skilled workers to replace them.

We know that this new visa will hurt the Australian apprenticeship system. As both the member for Watson and the Leader of the Opposition have said, that is what this is all about. The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs has tried to justify this scheme by saying it is just like international students studying at universities, but that is a false comparison. The characteristic which makes apprenticeships fundamentally different—and it seems to have escaped the ministers engaged in this debate—is that apprenticeships are employment based training contracts. You actually have to have an apprentice, a TAFE and, most importantly, an employer. Unlike our university places or other non-apprenticeship TAFE places, the ability to train our own in the trades depends on businesses’ capacity to take on apprentices. With no employer there is no apprentice—no apprenticeship available for our young people.

If companies are able to satisfy their training intake with apprentices from overseas, then of course it will be the case that opportunities for Australians will be lost. These new apprentice visa holders will not be in a teacher-student relationship with their local TAFE; they will be contractually beholden to their employers and to the jobs that they do. An apprentice has to accept the pay, conditions and work offered by the employer. They complete their training on the job or off the job with a TAFE or other registered training provider.

As others have said already in this debate—and the government likes to ignore the fact—it is no coincidence that this visa is being introduced at the same time as this government’s extreme industrial relations changes, because this apprenticeship visa invites employers to offer low-wage apprenticeships. Just imagine: a local kid in rural New South Wales refuses a mechanic’s apprenticeship on an AWA because the employer wants to pay less than the award rate, which is only $6.20 an hour—though, of course, under its extreme industrial relations policy, this government can just come along and offer them less. If the apprentice refuses, then the employer can fill that apprenticeship with someone from overseas.

Of course, that is if the apprenticeship position is even advertised. As the member for Watson says, nowhere amongst the 50 questions on the employer’s visa application does it require them to say where they advertised the job. These imported apprentices will be forced to accept whatever pay, working conditions and treatment that the boss decides to dish out or risk being deported. That is the reality. We know that these visas, as a result, will drive down wages for our local apprentices. Our local apprentices are already getting paid rock-bottom wages and these visas will drive those wages even lower, forcing our young people either to accept lower than award pay or to run the risk of having their apprenticeship taken by someone from overseas.

Another flaw we know of in the regulations that we are seeking to disallow tonight is the sham requirement that the company have ‘a satisfactory record of training Australians’. Where is that defined? Nobody knows. It is not defined in any of the documentation and the government’s Department of Education, Science and Training has no role whatsoever in advising the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs on whether a company has even trained one apprentice. There is no way that the government will check whether the company that is going to be importing these apprentices actually trains anyone. There is no satisfactory record that will be checked.

We must have a government that does better than this; otherwise, we are going to see as a result of this visa the undercutting of pay and conditions for our local apprentices because employers are not required to show what they have done when it comes to their own training commitment. We have not seen a government in this country committed to training Australians for 10 long years. We have seen a government that has taken a quick fix and brought in 270,000 extra skilled migrants while turning away 300,000 Australians from TAFE. It could start by pinching some of Labor’s policies which we have put forward in the last year: our commitment to getting rid of up-front TAFE fees or our proposal to pay $2,000 as a trade completion bonus to halve the current drop-out rate. These two measures alone would see 13,000 extra qualified Australian tradespeople. That is what we want to see. Unlike the Howard government, Labor’s priority is all about training Australians. We want to train Australians first and we want to train them now. I strongly support this disallowance motion because we want to give our kids a chance and make sure that when they get an apprenticeship they are properly paid.

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