Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You have had your opportunity, Bob, and it was very entertaining. It was not on point, but it was very entertaining. The objective is to give Australians the first crack at a job, whether it is in the resource sector or anywhere else. That is a proposition that I wholeheartedly support.

The problem with the proposition is that it is misconceived on one particular point, which I will go to. It says that EMAs should not be used unless a job is advertised. The problem with that is that in most instances the job will not exist at the time that the enterprise migration agreement is struck, because an enterprise migration agreement is an agreement which is struck before a project actually starts. It is struck because a lot of these resource projects are getting up and going in remote parts of Australia where there is not a labour force. The history with many of these companies is that they find it very difficult to attract workers to those places. However, they have to attract finance for the project and they have to get their bankers all lined up and their planning all lined up. The one variable that they cannot get lined up in advance is their labour force. So the enterprise migration agreement is the one piece of the puzzle that can enable the project to get up and running. It is not a blank piece of paper, because all the enterprise migration agreements will have a set of conditions that say you cannot bring somebody in on a 457 visa unless you have met those conditions. One of those conditions is that there is nobody available to employ within Australia. I know from my experience that there have been circumstances where local workers have been overlooked in favour of other people, because I have had these people come into my office and talk to me about it. The problem is not with the enterprise migration agreement; it is with the compliance and the policing of the conditions within that agreement.

I would say that this bill is misconceived. It has a noble purpose. The noble purpose is to ensure that Australian workers are at the front of the queue, but I suggest that there may be better ways of achieving that than the legislation that is currently before the House.

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