Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This government exploits foreign workers and turns all workers into unwilling participants in the Prime Minister’s wages race to the bottom. It is a government that will go to any lengths to avoid its responsibilities when it comes to training Australian kids.

Today we have heard the shameful story of Jack Zhang—exploited, cheated and now dumped by his employer. He is the latest victim of the Prime Minister’s immigration industrial relations one-two punch on Australian values, Australian jobs and Australian wages. He will not be the last. This is just a beginning. Make no mistake: the shameful treatment of Jack Zhang is no accident. The Prime Minister knows exactly what he is doing here, no matter how he might seek to evade the questions identifying him as the minister responsible for these particular events. He is deliberately using 457 visas to drive down everyone’s wages and to strip all workers of their rights and conditions.

Australians reading these stories that appeared today in the Age newspaper and others will be rightly horrified by the exploitation of this man. But there is something else at work here. These shocking cases have implications for Australian families. These shocking cases are all part of John Howard’s wages race to the bottom. The visas are the second line of attack in the campaign to destroy Australian values at work.

The Prime Minister’s industrial relations laws and now this shameful manipulation of our immigration system are working hand in glove to bring workers down. The rorting of the government’s 457 visas leaves foreign workers wide open for exploitation, and it threatens the wages and jobs security of all working Australians. When you take away all Jack Zhang’s rights and his conditions, you strip the rights and conditions of every worker. When Jack Zhang is cheated, robbed and exploited, you leave the door wide open to cheat, rob and exploit every other employee.

This is not about rogue bosses. This is all about the Prime Minister’s wages race to the bottom. He does not have any plan for the future other than exploiting overseas workers and driving down everyone’s wages. That is the only answer he has to Australia’s crippling skills shortage after 10 years in office and after repeated warnings not simply from the Labor Party but also from the Reserve Bank. He is uniquely responsible for that crippling skills shortage.

The government is so out of touch that the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education thinks the solution to Australia’s skills shortage is to build TAFE colleges in Africa. I see he is rushing to deny it. It is a story that he deliberately planted in the Australian newspaper; therefore I do not believe his denial. For 10 years this government has demonstrated such reluctance to train Australians, it is simply capable of anything. If he is not going to do it, why did he tell the Australian that he was?

In the last 10 years the Howard government has turned away 300,000 Australians from TAFE, so when these 300,000 Australians try to get the skills they need to be the smart, skilled workers that our country is crying out for, what does this Prime Minister do? He slams the door in their faces and he imports foreign apprentices. He gives Australia a massive skills crisis, high teenage unemployment and dog-eat-dog workplaces. When is this Prime Minister going to wake up? Australian parents want TAFE courses for their kids in Narrabri, not in Nairobi; in Bendigo, not in Botswana; and in Katoomba, not in Khartoum. Our economy demands that the skills crisis is solved on the New South Wales North Coast, not on Africa’s Ivory Coast.

Parents in Middle Australia must be wondering today what sort of Australia the Howard government wants to pass on to their kids. The Prime Minister has changed. He used to say he cared about Middle Australia. It is absolutely clear now that he does not care about Middle Australia. We in the Labor Party say, ‘Train Australians first and train them now.’ I say to the Prime Minister, ‘Stop turning your back on young Australians.’ Sadly Australian families are having to endure a Prime Minister who is wrongly caught up in the Middle East, when he ought to be focused on Middle Australia, and a training minister who is delivering ideas from middle earth, when he should be delivering for Middle Australia.

In the last six months, I have visited numerous workplaces around this nation. When I have gone to those workplaces, either in my own remarks or in questions asked of me, two areas have been mentioned: firstly, the impact of the industrial relations laws on workers and, secondly, the impact of 457 visas. I can tell you that in every workplace in Australia that I visit now, 457 visas are a matter of scandal. Everybody has a story of exploitation. Everybody has a story of manipulation and many Australians are fearful of the consequences for them.

I always preface my remarks in answer to any question or in directly addressing the matter with the commitment that I am a very strong supporter of the migration program in this country. I believe strongly that we need migrants, including skilled migrants. Australia was built on the hard work, determination and dreams of men and women born in other countries, but the migrants we need are those who sign up to Australian values, including Australian values and rights in the workplace. Migrants need to be empowered to sign up to Australian values and rights, including values and rights in the workplace. When they choose to leave a job, like any other Australian, they need to be able to leave that job without being expelled from the country. When they choose to approach their employer and demand that they get paid their proper award penalty rates, they must be paid the proper rates.

These to me are all central features of Australian values. They ought to apply to us whether or not we come from seven or eight generations of Australians or whether we arrived here yesterday. That is the sort of Australia we want. That is the sort of Australia there must be. But today the 457 visa system is undermining the migration program. It is undermining workplace relations in this country. It is undermining fundamental Australian values. It is utterly hypocritical of the Prime Minister to be out there saying that he thinks all people in this country should speak English while they import bushels worth of workers who have absolutely no understanding of the language and pose for themselves and their coworkers the most direct possible threat to their safety in the workplace. Through no fault of their own, they are in a position where they can deliberately be exploited, used as cheap labour and be dispensed with. It is extraordinary. I will say more about that later.

There has been a massive surge in the number of 457 applicants and entrants. We are beginning to see why this particular migration category is being perverted when we look at what happened to Jack Zhang. To get his job at a Melbourne printing company he paid almost $10,000 to an employment agent in China and another $10,000 was deducted from his pay packet by his employer. He was paid $751.92 a week; the award is $1,140. He worked 60 hours a week and received $60 overtime; under the award he should have been paid $152.00. On top of that he paid rent to his employer. Now, having paid off his $10,000 debt, he has been sacked and evicted, and his boss, apparently adopting the attitude that there are plenty more where Jack Zhang came from, has another worker already on his way from China.

This case has serious implications for Australian workers because it sets a new low benchmark. It drives down wages and conditions for everyone in the workforce. It means that every other Australian worker has otherwise to compete at these rates. Understand this—

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