Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

and when capital is scarce, as the member for Moreton rightly raises? As has been pointed out, you set up a project-wide labour agreement, custom designed for a particular project like this one, negotiated with the project owner as this was, which sets the terms by which overseas workers will be engaged as they should be. It will be available to resource projects with capital expenditure of more than $2 billion and a peak workforce of more than 1,500. It is all set out in the facts sheet available on Immigration's website. It is all spelt out there. I thank the member for Parramatta, who brought this to our attention today. I follow her Twitter account and that is where she posted it today. You are able to see for yourself, in fact, what we have been doing, and it has been out there for ages. It is straightforward stuff.

I want to draw the House's attention to what the opposition said a few days ago. The member for Cook was talking to Andrew Bolt and said:

Well this project needed to get a guarantee of supply of labour in order to secure its funding. So the first 6,000 jobs, remember this is going to create about 8,000 jobs—

The member for Cook is actually selling this project quite well—

6,000 of those will go to Australians under the agreement the government has approved. So we have never had a problem with Enterprise Migration Agreements—

never had a problem—

and ensuring that our mining and resources sector has the certainty …

And then, in a couple of days things changed. When they sniffed that there might be an opportunity to cause mischief, suddenly the member for Warringah, the Leader of the Opposition, created all sorts of attempts to jump on this issue.

It is worth making the House aware of—and the member for Cook should probably pay attention—the previous government's 457 rules. Remember, they brought in 457s because the RBA had been saying for ages that the economy was threatened by capacity constraints, particularly skill shortages, which the opposition—the then government—did nothing about. So they put together the 457 process because they could not actually deal with skill shortages in this country. Remember this: under their rules, Roy Hill would have been able to sponsor semiskilled workers without consultation—no consultation with unions—without paying market wages and without formal skills assessments. That was their 457 approach.

Do the coalition actually intend to reverse our reforms? Will they retain market wages safety nets that are a feature of our regime and will they provide a guarantee against foreign workers undermining working conditions and competing unfairly against workers? These are important questions, which I suspect will never get answered because they are never interested in policy; they are only ever interested in politics. As I said, they think that this is an opportunity for them to find division instead of solution and to bag and carp instead of coming up with their own ideas. They only ever really want to create mischief by seizing on the concerns of unions.

As I said, the member for Warringah was talking about Aussie jobs but, when they needed to actually support Aussies in getting trained and meeting the skills need, they were not there. The architects of Work Choices are now the defenders of Aussie conditions. I have seen it all! It is like Colonel Sanders defending Weight Watchers. I love seeing the way these guys operate.

I certainly get that unions would want detail and would want protections. I will draw the House's attention to the comment of the CEPU's National Secretary Peter Tighe, who said:

We have to accept that there are massive projects in the pipeline, worth $300 billion to $400bn, and this country has shortages in filling the skills needs. … Australia has been bringing in people to fill skills shortages since World War II.

As a union our job is to ensure we have a say—

which they will get—

that the people coming in are properly tested—

that is right—

accredited and that we have agreements that also guarantee apprenticeships and the upskilling of the existing workforce.

EMAs are terrific for our economy and country and should not be the subject of political opportunism. (Time expired)

See this speech in context