Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in support of the Migration Legislation Amendment (Worker Protection) Bill 2008, and note that the bill is, in principle, similar to the Migration Amendment (Sponsorship Obligations) Bill 2007 introduced into the parliament by the previous government on 21 June 2007. That bill was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which subsequently tabled its report on 7 August 2007. But the bill was never debated and subsequently lapsed when the parliament was prorogued.

I also note that the original bill, the Migration Amendment (Sponsorship Obligations) Bill 2007, arose at a time when the Joint Standing Committee on Migration was inquiring into issues relating to temporary business section 457 visas. This Migration Legislation Amendment (Worker Protection) Bill includes important extra measures to the previous bill and has also been considered by two Senate committees—the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

This bill is fundamentally about the protection of workers in Australia, with specific reference in this case to temporary workers who are brought into Australia under temporary visas. I listened earlier to the contribution from the member for Wills, and I thought he made an excellent contribution in summing up the issues that have arisen in years gone by and that, in effect, caused both the previous government and the current government to look at temporary visas and how they were being applied to people who were being brought into this country for work purposes.

Regrettably, many of these workers, once in Australia, were exploited by unscrupulous employers, with many examples of underpayment, poor living conditions and unsatisfactory workplace conditions. For many of these workers, once they were here there was little choice but to work under whatever conditions they were exposed to. It was worker exploitation at its worst. They could not get work elsewhere, they needed whatever income they earned to survive and there was no-one they could turn to for assistance without risking having their work visa cancelled.

This is still occurring today because the laws we have in place relating to this issue are totally inadequate, having been made more inadequate by the previous government’s Work Choices laws. Only two weeks ago, two separate matters in respect to workers being exploited in this country were raised with me. One related to workers who were unskilled, the other related to workers who were very skilled. It still goes on today, and so the sooner this legislation is adopted by parliament, the better.

Under existing laws, department of immigration officers have neither the powers nor the resources to monitor and enforce the workplace practices of those who sponsor 457 visa entrants. Nor does the Australian Taxation Office have powers or authority with respect to those same issues. Regrettably, the coalition Work Choices legislation not only provided employers with incredible scope for exploitation of the most vulnerable workers but also ensured that workers’ unions, which in the past would have protected such workers, were shut out. Many of these workers were from developing countries. It is true that any money that they earned while in Australia was more than what they might have earned in their own country, but after paying for their living expenses here, sometimes including exorbitant accommodation costs, employment agency costs and migration agency costs, they were left with nothing.

While on the subject of migration, I take this opportunity to refer to another matter. On Monday in question time, we had the member for Murray make the outrageous assertion that the Rudd government’s detention policy was causing a surge of boat people into Australia. On the same night, Monday, 1 December, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration presented its first report on detention policy in Australia, having spent the past 12 months inquiring into detention centres and the appalling treatment of refugees in Australia. All members of the committee agreed that Australia’s appalling detention policies in recent years had been unjust and were cause for much criticism of the Australian government. The committee made 18 recommendations in that report, all recommending a much more humane treatment of refugees. In fact, two of the coalition members submitted a dissenting report arguing that the committee’s recommendations did not go far enough, and nor did the Rudd government’s new detention—

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