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

You are responsible, along with Prime Minister, for what has been happening. The 457 visa category was introduced for the very sensible purpose—and it has been there for a very lengthy period—of ensuring that in specific projects, when there is a requirement for a particular skills set that may be closely related to a type of job that is being developed in this country, the person can be brought in. Rarely has it raised in the past issues of whether or not the person has access to the English language. Rarely has it raised issues about the real skills and qualifications of the person concerned. Rarely has it raised issues about the correct payment of the persons involved. They were usually generally highly skilled and paid way beyond that paid for any other Australian workers engaged in the process—that is, until a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago, all this started to change and the people who entered under the 457 visa were very different people indeed.

They were the sorts of people we saw recently at the ABC Tissues site in Sydney, where workers brought in under 457 visas could not speak enough English to read safety instructions or understand verbal instructions on work sites. As one Australian worker on the site said, ‘We would see people on the roof 20 metres in the air and you could not even yell at them to get down.’ An unskilled foreign worker tried to fit a power tool plug into a socket by stripping the cord and inserting naked wires straight into the socket. The staggering hypocrisy of this Prime Minister, saying workers should learn to speak English while allowing workers whose lack of English endangers them and their workmates to come into this country! We discovered that in the same workplace in Sydney up to 50 Australian tradespeople were stood down without pay while temporary foreign workers were kept on and continued to be paid. Australian fitters, welders, boilermakers and electricians were stood down in the week of 18 August 2006 and the site was shut down for around two weeks, but the temporary foreign workers were kept on pay the whole time. It is unfair that local tradespeople on higher wages are stood down while cheaper temporary foreign workers keep their jobs.

The Prime Minister has no shame on these matters. He will stop at nothing. When some journalist or the Labor Party or the trade union movement exposes one of these atrocities, we get the minister, full of unction, up here talking about how an investigation is going to take place into all of that. Exposed, it will be dealt with; not exposed, it just continues its insidious work, backing up the efforts that this government is now making to undermine the wages and conditions of all Australians, particularly entry-level Australians who are entering the workforce for the first time. We are on to this government and we will deal with this government in our campaigning around the country. As I have had evidence of already—as I have occasion to know—people are very interested in what I have to say on these matters. (Time expired)

See this speech in context