Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This has been a long time in the process; the Migration Amendment (Employer Sanctions) Bill 2006 has been listed for a significant period of time. Coming from the Riverina area, the electorate that I represent, I have a significant population of constituents who are reliant on visa workers to get their crops off to a market in order to earn a dollar. I recall when the review of illegal workers was taking place. I was very new in the House. The review of illegal workers was in fact presented by former member for Riverina Noel Hicks. That was presented in November 1999. I must say that I was extraordinarily concerned for the wellbeing and welfare of the growers that I represented.

As the new member for Riverina, in 1998-99 I went to the hearings and expressed my major concerns with the way the committee was heading in trying to provide a platform of blame and penalties for the growers in my region who were simply doing no more than trusting the evidence and information that they were given and trying to get a product to market. They were going to bear the brunt of this entire report. So I am very happy to see that there have been some very common-sense movements with respect to employers. I really have to thank the former minister for immigration, the Hon. Amanda Vanstone, for her absolutely common-sense appraisal, approach and attitude towards this whole issue.

Under the proposed scheme that we have before us now, through the Migration Amendment (Employer Sanctions) Bill 2006 employers would only commit an offence if they knowingly or recklessly allowed an illegal worker to perform work. The recommendations regarding the more onerous strict liability offences and on-the-spot fines in the Review of illegal workers in Australia will not be introduced. That is of grave importance to me and to the growers that I represent in the Riverina and it is a huge amount of relief.

This bill will not require all employers in Australia to do work rights checking. Employers will only need to consider doing a work rights check where there is a substantial risk that the job applicant is an illegal worker. The MIA is a melting pot of multiculturalism, a melting pot of different nationalities. I cannot imagine—and I questioned this with the committee when it was doing the report—where a potential employer would legally stand if somebody who might not appear to be a resident of Australia presented to them and the employer had to continually enforce some type of test upon them to prove that they were Australian. The majority of my electorate are of multicultural descent but were born in Australia. Many of them do not speak clearly when framing the English language. It could very well be construed that each and every one of those people presenting for work might be an illegal immigrant or somebody who does not have a work right. It puts an employer in an enormously difficult situation—that is, how to prove that someone who comes to their workplace is an Australian, was born here and has lived here all their life. I was always concerned about the potential for discrimination on the basis of colour or speech. An employer might not ask a Caucasian who comes through the door, who obviously speaks very strong ocker, Aussie English, to prove that they are an Australian citizen with work rights, that they were born in Australia or that they have a right to work. I could not see how this was going to work in my electorate, and it was of grave concern.

At that time, the particular issue of unskilled labourers in my electorate of Riverina was of increasing concern, and it still is. It will go on being an increasing concern. One such thing that I will try to resolve—and, I suspect, if I am fortunate enough to be elected in the next parliament, I will still be trying to resolve—is how I can get unskilled workers to do the work that is required from my growers. When I raise this issue publicly in my electorate I get attacked from every union known to man, on the basis that (1) I am trying to take away Australian jobs, (2) I am trying to force people into low-paid wages or force draconian conditions on them and (3) I am responsible for the demise of jobs for people without higher education. I object to that. I can tell you that no matter what we pay and what we do Australians on the whole are not willing to do this work. Many times it is people who have come from other countries who have done similar work and who are well equipped to work who are very comfortable in that working environment, very comfortable with the award wages that are offered. In fact, the accusation has been put to me that my growers underpay these people and that they do not get their rights. They get their superannuation payments, they get award payments. My growers themselves do not have superannuation. My growers are sometimes living day to day, week to week. They try to get off-farm work to subsidise the family farm.

So there is a need to understand the whole dynamic of what is required. We have a recognised shortage of electricians, doctors, dentists, nurses and workers in pathology and in a whole host of other areas. But there is not just a shortage of skilled workers; there is an unskilled labour shortage. That shortage affects the economy in the Riverina enormously. As is my right, I will always advocate for, encourage and enable visitors to undertake this work without harassment from those who say that I am trying to advocate against Australians getting these jobs. I repeat: Australians are not willing to come in and do these jobs. This has been proven by the crops that remain on the trees and in the ground simply because we cannot get anyone to pick them.

My electorate relies on transient tourists and visa labour to meet its market requirements. Primary producers in Griffith are reliant on our backpacker market, and we have had some fabulous working holiday visas implemented by the minister in order to meet some of the requirements. The problem that I have is that it is not a reliable source of employees for my growers. There is limited access to the Riverina through public transport. There is no bus that goes from Sydney to Griffith. There is some rail, but the cost is quite high. Most of our backpackers and those on working holiday visas would rather go to the coastal areas and do light duties—picking strawberries, tomatoes and mangoes and other tropical fruits. They have beaches to swim off and warm weather. We attract some through the MIA in the Riverina, because it is the most glorious place to go. If they really knew what we had to offer then I am sure that we would attract more. But we have not got the infrastructure and the facilities—such as backpacker accommodation that is affordable and available—to encourage these working holiday visa holders to come into the Riverina. It is very difficult to attract them to my electorate from off that path of sunshine and sand. That leaves my growers at a substantial disadvantage when they are looking at how they are going to access workers to get their crops picked.

We also have crops that backpackers and those on working holiday visas are not adequately physically equipped to deal with. It is extremely hard work. To harvest citrus and vegetable crops can be backbreaking work, so to speak. One needs to be accustomed to that. There has been some comment, and I have indicated this also, that it is unskilled workers who come in to bring in the citrus harvest. But in fact the workers are quite skilled. They are very skilled, because there are very few people who can stand up to the rigours of citrus picking and vegetable picking. It takes a certain type of skill and a certain type of person. You need to have an inordinate understanding of the harvest and the citrus-harvesting process. It is all manual. It is not done by machines. It is a very manual job that is carried out there. It is the same for vegetable produce. Those people need to have integrity and a strength of character so that they are able to endure the very harsh conditions that exist at times out in the field. They are very willing to do this work if they can get a reliable visa. My growers are very willing to pay for that work to be done.

There will be good and bad growers—I am not saying that every grower operates perfectly. There is good and bad in absolutely everybody and everything. Yes, you may get a grower here or there who may not do the right thing. Twelve months ago, a contract labourer took money off the producers to pay to a labour contract hire group and he took off with that money. But that was not the producer; the producer paid the money out to the labour contractor. The labour contractor did not pay it to the people who did the work. That was a very sad thing. But it was not the employer—my producers—who did the wrong thing there.

If we had appropriate and sufficient harvest labour from people with work rights then you would certainly see the use of illegal workers extraordinarily minimised. As I said, my growers go through every avenue that they can to determine whether or not a worker is a legal worker. But, as I said, how do you confront people and embarrassingly ask them if they have the right to work in Australia when they may very well be Australian born citizens? We have many hurdles to overcome in the area of labour shortages. I am fully supportive of any legal initiative that can be put in place to assist them to remain viable and productive producers. The introduction of this amending legislation will assist my producers greatly in this effort. They certainly need our help and protection in a number of areas, and this legislation will protect their rights in a scheme that was designed to help them cope with the skilled labour requirements of the harvest.

I commend this amendment bill. To frame the offences in this way ensures that the focus is on employers and labour suppliers of concern to the government without imposing any undue and additional burden on business generally. An employer will only be reckless if there is a substantial risk that the employee is an illegal worker. Recklessness may be proved in prosecution if a number of basic conditions are satisfied. I am quite happy with this. One of the elements that might go to proving recklessness is where the employer in question has previously been warned about employing illegal workers and has been given guidance on how to check work rights and then continually offends in this area. I do not have any problem with that. I am not here to support any employer abusing any person providing labour on their properties—that is certainly not what I am about. But I am here to establish that employers, in the main, do the right thing and are generally caught out unbeknownst to them.

Also, the concept of allowing an illegal worker to work is defined broadly to capture work related relationships that are commonly used in industries where illegal workers are found. There are 46,000 visa overstayers in Australia, and it is believed that a substantial proportion are working illegally to support their stay here. I must say that we do have a highly effective processing arrangement, but we also have a highly effective immigration department. They are continually on surveillance in my electorate, and I encourage that to happen because I think that we need to recognise the difficulty that illegal people have in staying in Australia. It is not fair on them that they should be continually running from the law, so to speak. Sometimes it is in their very best interest to be caught, to be accountable and to go through the process in the legal channels rather than to be continually at risk of abuse. I think it is very unfair.

I have seen my fair share of people who are continually on the run, moving from one place to another for years. I have had people come to my office who have been running from the process for 20 years. Inevitably I say, ‘You really have to just give yourself up to the process, because this is no life.’ Many of them have had children whilst they have been in Australia, and of course they are submitted to this continual moving and a lifestyle of hide-and-seek, which is very unfair on the children as well.

My farmers are desperate to employ. When I was going through many of the submissions to the review of illegal workers, I was sad to look at the submissions that came in from Griffith City Council, the development corporation, Pickers Plus and the area consultative committee and to see what issues and concerns they outlined—why we were so reliant on backpackers and people who were transient to meet labour demands. This put my growers at some substantial disadvantage or at risk of inadvertently employing illegal workers. It is real desperation. I was sad that in 1999 there was a regional labour shortfall of approximately 500 people required for harvest, and I suspect that it is still very similar to that.

I have a trail of correspondence to the former minister to try and resolve this in a number of ways. We have a policy—and I fully support the policy—of a non-discriminatory, open immigration process that does not allow me to target a particular sort of aid program or support program in the Solomon Islands or other areas that I know would be able to fulfil this role for the producers and in turn give great benefits to the islanders. Fortunately—and unfortunately, at times—we do have a non-discriminatory policy. You just cannot allow one country to come in and provide this sort of work. But there has been a trail of correspondence since my election, and I suspect it will continue, because I will not stop looking for an answer to how my growers can sustainably survive and get reliable seasonal workers. That really is not seasonal work now; it is really 12 months of the year. But I commend this amendment bill to the House. I am very pleased. (Time expired)

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