Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Migration Amendment (Offshore Resources Activity) Bill 2013. I do so because I have a strong interest in this issue, given the fact that much of this activity that we are talking about happens off the coast of Western Australia, the state in which I represent the electorate of Canning. At first blush, on looking at this bill, one would think that this government was interested in some motive that was highly commendable for protecting our borders. It says here that it is not uncommon for illegal maritime arrivals to present at oil rigs and resource installations in the ocean. Currently, these ocean installations are not defined as part of Australia's migration zone. Consequently, if an illegal maritime arrival reaches an oil rig presently, they are not taken to have arrived in Australia's migration zone and could be processed offshore. The rest of this bill does not properly consider that they may undermine the offshore processing arrangements. How altruistic. But this is not what the bill is about.

This bill is about a further grab for union control of the Australian workforce. Let's have a look why. The fact of the matter is that this bill was introduced into parliament by Minister O'Connor on 30 May this year. We want to understand why it was introduced by Minister O'Connor and not by former Minister Bowen. Minister O'Connor has form in this area. You have to understand the history of somebody coming into this place with the agenda that he has. You have to know where they have been to know where they are going. We know that this minister was an Irish citizen born in England who migrated to Australia and eventually found that his best form of employment was to involve himself in the union movement—which is fine. I was a union rep myself in my previous days as a schoolteacher. Collective bargaining is not such a bad thing if it protects the rights and conditions of workers. But this is not what it is about. This is about a power grab by the unions to control the resources sector.

Not only does this minister have form from his previous working history; his brother is one of the big bosses in the CFMEU, Mr Michael O'Connor, who I understand is a very close friend of the Prime Minister. As a result, he has been sent into this place on a number of bills while there are over 200 bills that we have waiting to be passed in the next eight days in this parliament—7½ now. Why is this so important to get through in the dying days of this Gillard government? It is about shoring up one's base. It is about shoring up the financial support and support for tenure in one's seat among those in the union movement. We know that Michael O'Connor has a lot of influence. That is how his brother became a member of parliament: he had his backing. This is payback time. This is real payback time in terms of this minister and the final days of this parliament. Last week, another bill was brought into this parliament. It was called the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013. It was meant to talk about bullying, but it was actually about rights of entry and about people being able to enter the crib rooms on worksites to sign up members on spurious safety concerns. I spoke on that bill, and this is no different. This is about allowing union representatives to fly onto areas offshore—in terms of our continental shelf and our resources zone, which is about 200 kilometres—and to fly onto these rigs, these production boats, with the same rights of entry into offshore facilities.

As I said on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 last time we were here, what people do not understand is that this right of entry provision that is in this bill forced the owners of the construction and resource sites to pay for the transport and accommodation costs of the union people coming onsite. It was predicted that it could be up to $30,000. For example, you could fly from Perth to Karratha, you could get a helicopter out to a rig, you would be accommodated on the rig and then you would be flown back. The cost of all this could be up to $30,000 per person, and who is bearing the cost? This is all about right of entry onto our resource projects. Is it any wonder that we are now becoming uncompetitive with the rest of the world in terms of developing our resources projects and they are going offshore. Further to this, people complained about James Price Point being established onshore in the Kimberleys, for a whole range of reasons—some environmental. Broome was split down the middle over this issue. Their solution was to bring the gas from the development of this gas field by pipeline down to the LNG plants in Port Hedland. Not a bad solution. There was another solution around instead of developing Inpex in Darwin, taking the pipe from the Timor Sea and that northern area there as well.

The problem is that the boats that are laying the pipes and servicing this particular industry are generally manned by people with offshore companies. We do not have the resources. Earlier in this parliament, the Labor Party were successful in essentially locking out foreign flag vessels from our ports unless they received the same terms and conditions of payment on their ships. You cannot compare like with like—and we will not go down that road—but, at the end of the day, if you are flagged out of the Philippines and you arrive in Australia, and the Filipino average wage is $100 a week and it is $1,000 a week in Australia, you are essentially stopping Filipino boats coming into Australia.

Ann Pickard from Shell has decided that, instead of developing James Price Point, they will have an offshore gas facility with a massive refinement and production facility on a huge boat. Most of the skills that are on these sorts of facilities are highly specialised. Many of these people are not to be found in Australia, so you get the argument about 457s and those sorts of things. In the interim, until we do skill our workforce—and I agree with the member for Wills that we should have Australians doing these jobs—we should not stop the good job from going ahead because we do not have an Australian to do it. As a result, rather than have the project go ahead with the use of some foreign skilled workers, they are saying that you cannot have them at all. That is what this migration amendment bill is about. It is not about illegals tying up to oil rigs, it is about stopping people from coming to Australia. It is stopping people from flying through Australia and landing, for example, in Karratha, catching a helicopter out to the rig or the production platform and working on that rig so that it can produce or drill.

What the minister is doing in this bill is saying, 'We want them to now get a visa if there is a flight through Karratha.' The previous speaker—the member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson—said: 'This can be worked out. Just trust us. We'll give you a temporary holiday visa.' It does not work. You cannot get a temporary holiday visa to go and work on an offshore platform. As we have already heard, previous companies have been held up and in court for a long period of time trying to get their workers here on these so-called 'temporary visas'. He says that there needs to be certainty and that this legislation will bring certainty. It will not bring certainty to the workers and it will not bring certainty to the projects; it will only bring certainty to the unions, because they want these blokes to join a union. As I said, there is nothing wrong with joining a union, but most of the people who are coming to these offshore facilities are not Australians, because they are owned by foreign companies. What happens as a result? A tug tows a platform from South Korea down to Australia and drops it into the water off there, and then Labor says, 'Hang on, we want someone from the union and the migration department to go out and check that they have got a visa.' They are not even going to touch the mainland, in many cases, and they want them to enter into a visa arrangement. It is just impractical.

That is why the shadow minister, Scott Morrison, has said, 'This legislation shouldn't be before this House until it has been through the Senate committee.' There are a whole lot of unintended consequences in this bill that should not be allowed to happen. There are flow-on effects that could happen, for goodness' sake, with us trying to unpick them. The cant and hypocrisy about all this is that, in terms of right of entry in the bill last week, the Independents said, 'We are not going to allow this through this place unless it is bipartisan, because we don't think it is in the Australian interest to allow these sorts of last-minute changes to happen to the Australian workforce without proper scrutiny and in a rush in the last days.' Surprise, surprise: the member for New England found some way not to be here so that the bill passed by one vote. So much for sincerity and genuine behaviour. He let it through. They are saying, 'Trust us.' It is the same on this right of entry provision—they are saying, 'Trust us.' 'More consultation,' the member for Wills said. 'There needs to be more consultation, which will follow, so trust us.' How can we trust this side of the parliament with anything when they have done to our borders what they are doing now?

Why are we talking about this bill? This Gillard-Rudd government have been in power since 2007 when they changed the migration laws. We have since had 44,219 people—and probably more because this was given to me a few days ago—and the total number of boats since 2007 has been 723 boats. I cannot keep it updated in case somebody else has arrived today. They are not coming by small boats. They are coming by ferries now. Ferries carry 200 people or more. That is how many are arriving on certain boats. They are in a rush because they know that this side of the House will stop that terrible behaviour.

The government should be concentrating on stopping these people fraudulently getting to Australia. We saw on the front page of the Australian newspaper today about the lies that have been told. You do not tell a genuine story. You make up a story so you can get past the migration officials when they assess you. The officials have actually stopped assessing people now. I think the minister said we have something like 13,000, or is it 19,000, parked in the Australian community because they cannot be processed. The next government are going to inherit this problem. Whatever the figure is, it is thousands and it is a disgrace. So do not tell us about trusting you on border protection.

Here we are, trusting the minister. He said there are 10,000 rorts—and I am going to speak on this tomorrow—with 457 visas. I did a report on this which I will talk about tomorrow. It was a bipartisan report which found none of this and suddenly the minister said 10,000 and then he said he was only guessing and he was not sure. On this case, he said there are a whole lot of rorts in this activity. So in 2012 there were 99 inspections covering 156 facilities. Have a guess how many complaints they had. There were 13 complaints. They are bringing in legislation for 13 complaints when there are 13,000 people parked in the Australian community taking the resources and the welfare from the likes of the Salvation Army that could be giving it to hard done by Australians. Don't tell me this is important legislation that has to get through.

I am sure the Independents will pass this as they do everything. They are going to finally ingratiate themselves in the last eight days. Hopefully their electorates in New England and Lyne are hearing that they are going to help get this sort of legislation through because any future government that has to unpick it will have all sorts of problems because they have landed it through the Senate.

At the end of the day, this is not legislation that is important. Out of all the legislation that needs to come through this House, this is one of the least important pieces. The Labor Party is holding up this parliament and trying to ram this through. They have even changed the agenda—the speaker list—to get this through ahead of other legislation. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Asian Century) Bill 2013 was meant to be before this. So much for Gonski. This is Minister O'Connor paying back his union brother and his union mates in the dying days of this government because they know if they do not they will be in trouble in terms of their funding and their preselections. I hope people see this for what it is worth. It is a payback at the very last moment and this bill does not need to be through this House. It needs to be scrutinised properly in a committee of the Senate which was agreed to earlier and it has not been done. As a result, of course we will not be supporting this legislation.

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