Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government’s neglect of young Australians with the introduction of the trade skills training visa is absolutely a matter of the utmost public importance. The complete neglect of young Australians by this government through this visa is a matter that goes to the heart of the future wellbeing of this country and is a matter that will adversely affect the social and economic security of Australia’s future generations. The trade skills training visa will result in the driving down of youth wages and see young Australians robbed of both work and training opportunities.

This visa is very different from a visa under the skilled migration scheme. This visa headhunts unskilled and untrained migrants to fill apprenticeships and traineeships in regional areas that, in many cases, could be going to young Australians. As a result of this visa, young Australians will miss out because, unlike universities, you cannot just create extra places at TAFE. Every apprenticeship must have available not only a place at TAFE but also an employer who is both willing and able to take on an apprentice. When there are only a limited number of employers who can do this, people will inevitably miss out on a place and on an opportunity. This visa will see that young Australians are denied a place for an apprenticeship, because places will have been filled from overseas. If companies can satisfy their training intake from apprentices overseas, it is logical that opportunities for Australians will disappear.

The government should be ashamed of its blatant and clear betrayal of young Australians through this visa. It should be ashamed to sell out the future welfare and security of our youth simply as a bandaid solution to a problem that should have been addressed a decade ago. Young Australians must be put first. The government’s suggestion that the trade skills training visa is necessary because there just are not enough people wanting to fill apprenticeships and training places is disgraceful. In my electorate, I have spoken to a number of young constituents who are constantly looking for full-time work, job security and a form of training that will equip them for decent future employment prospects. It is absolutely disheartening to see these people locked in a position where they are unskilled and have to rely on casual and intermittent work which not only pays insufficiently but also leaves them with few rights at work and no job security.

The northern and western statistical region of South Australia’s youth unemployment rate for kids between the ages of 15 and 19 stands at 21.8 per cent. I would like to see the Prime Minister come to this area and tell this 21.8 per cent of young South Australians that he is giving away their potential employment opportunities to unskilled overseas labour. The whole of South Australia is classified as a regional area for migration purposes, which means that my own electorate of metropolitan Adelaide, as well as the entire state, will be affected by this visa. Across the nation, we have 193,000 young people who are not in full-time education and not fully engaged in the labour market. These young Australians, the Australians who are being denied opportunities to improve their lives, are our future. These young people, who are struggling to find secure employment and who are desperately searching for an apprenticeship, training and a career, are the very same people whose training this government should be prioritising.

The government have argued that the trade skills visa has adequate safeguards to protect young Australians. They have suggested that, by requiring any potential employer to demonstrate that there are no local people prepared to take the job, young Australians will remain a priority. However, these safeguards are completely inadequate. I want the government to demonstrate just how this safeguard will work when absolutely nowhere in the employer’s application form is there any obligation or requirement for the employer to advertise locally for the position before employing someone through the program. How can an employer possibly know that no local people are prepared to take on the job if they do not advertise? Even if they did advertise locally, how can an employer from my electorate in central Adelaide guarantee that there are no young Australians in Naracoorte, no young Australians in Murray Bridge, Mannum or Port Augusta—that there are no young Australians who are desperate to undertake such an apprenticeship and who will be sold out by the introduction of this visa? How then can the government possibly insist that young Australians will be put first? The fact is that they cannot. This assurance is just one in a long line of empty and misleading promises from this government, who are out of touch and continue to neglect their training responsibilities. This visa program offers blatant incentives for businesses not to take on young Australian apprentices.

Isn’t the timing of the introduction of such a visa interesting? It happened to be introduced just after the introduction of the so-called Work Choices legislation. This is no coincidence. This is part of the government’s long-term plan to wind back the clock for workers and drive wages down, because, according to the government, that is how Australia must compete in the international labour market. This training visa is a double blow for young Australians, who will already be amongst the hardest hit by the government’s mean, extreme and divisive Work Choices laws.

When negotiating with their employer over pay conditions, many young Australians will be left no option but to take whatever wages and conditions are offered. Now that an employer is able to make signing an AWA a condition of employment, if a local apprentice is offered an AWA which undercuts the award and if that local apprentice declines the offer, the business will then be able to recruit an imported apprentice to fill the so-called vacancy—with pay conditions below what an Australian would accept—on the grounds that the business could not reasonably fill that position.

Let us also be clear that any overseas worker who tries to turn down an unfair AWA would not only lose their position; they would lose their visa. This visa is designed to headhunt unskilled and untrained overseas workers. It is not skilled migration at all. I want to make it very clear that I believe skilled migration has a role to play as a valuable component of Australia’s economic and cultural development. I also believe, however, that it should never be used as the primary source of delivering an adequate skilled labour force. It is deeply concerning to watch this government use the skilled migration program as an excuse to cover up for a complete lack of investment in educating young Australians. Skilled migration must not take the place of training Australians and it must not lead to the exploitation of overseas workers and the driving down of wages. This, unfortunately but not surprisingly, has already started to happen in my home state.

In Adelaide, Holden’s new plant recently employed 34 European tradesmen to build a key component of their new plant. Over 1,000 workers had recently been retrenched from Holden, late last year, yet local workers were not afforded the opportunity to be trained for this work. On top of this, there have been recent reports in the Adelaide Advertiser of the overseas workers being significantly underpaid and claims that one worker may even have been threatened with deportation because he took a sick day.

I would suggest that this government may be much better placed to ditch the bad policy that is the trades skills training visa and, instead, perhaps start monitoring any misuse of the skilled migration program. It is time that this government started looking out for Australia’s youth. I want to make it clear as I stand here today that the crisis this country currently faces with the skills shortage has not simply arisen today or yesterday and it is not an epidemic that has hit our shores in the last six months. It is an issue that has been a problem over the 10 long years of this government and over that time it has continued to become more serious.

Every single area of traditional trade over the last 10 years has reported a shortage in at least eight of those 10 years. Many skilled occupations have been on the national skills shortage list for almost 10 years. What action have we seen by this government over its 10 years in government to address the skills shortage? We have seen no commitment to education or training; in fact, we have seen the opposite. Now the government’s solution to this problem involves kicking young Australians down, by depriving them of employment opportunities and a chance of improving their standard of living. This visa is a blatant and cruel betrayal of Australia’s youth and of Australia’s future economic and social prosperity. Since coming to power, this government has turned its back on around 300,000 Australians wanting to study at TAFE, young Australians wanting and willing to learn to improve their skills in the workplace and to better their future prospects. Three hundred thousand young Australians have been denied this opportunity.

See this speech in context