Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for his question. It does worry me that the former Premier of Victoria wrote to my predecessor, Minister Bowen, to seek changes to the guidelines of regional migration agreements so that Geelong can have an RMA applied to it, even though the unemployment figure in Geelong is higher than the national average. That is of deep concern to me. That is combined with the lethal cocktail of state Liberal governments cutting TAFE places across the state. What you have here is a situation where TAFE places are being reduced, young workers are not getting sufficiently trained and, at the same time, Liberal state governments are seeking to broaden the regional migration agreement guidelines in order to ensure that those local workers will miss out on getting those places. That is not the basis upon which the 457 scheme was to be implemented in this country. That is why we need these reforms. I thank the member for his concern—and I also thank the member for Corio, Richard Marles, for his concern—that workers in that area and in other areas across Australia have the opportunities first and that we use 457s only where there are genuine skills shortages.

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