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

My question is to the Prime Minister. I again refer the Prime Minister to the ABC Tissues case, where the Chinese workers do not speak enough English to understand safety instructions. Prime Minister, isn’t it the case that the government’s 457 visa scheme, which has seen a 66 per cent increase in temporary skilled migrants since 2003-04, has no specific English-speaking requirements at all? How does the Prime Minister justify this blatant hypocrisy, when he himself wrote in the Daily Telegraph on the weekend:

Simple tasks like securing a job ... would be so much harder in Australia without a working knowledge of English.

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