Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Hughes says no. I can tell you, Member for Hughes, it is right. He is here on a 457, and that is laughable. What is more, half of the members of the Transport Workers Union are here on a 457. They are here on 457s working in the press office of the TWU's Tony Sheldon. The hypocrisy, the irony, the silliness of this debate is astounding.

The Labor Party will be damned by their own words when it comes to 457s. I want to share with the member for Hotham and the member for Werriwa some key words. This is what the Prime Minister has said about 457s:

… we will need skilled migration. I believe we've got the visa settings right particularly with short term 457 visas.

How about that? Chris Bowen, who was then the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, said:

… migration is shaped by Australia's economic needs, and the Temporary Business 457 visa is a key pillar in this approach.

So you have the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship; and, what is more, the Prime Minister had the gall to say on the 457s:

We inherited from the previous government a 457 temporary foreign worker visa program that was totally out of control …

If it was so totally out of control, why has the government seen more than a 20 per cent increase in 457s over the last year? That is the obvious question. If there were so many problems with the 457 system, why has the Prime Minister and the minister for immigration gone on the record glorifying the 457 system, failing to do anything about the rorts that they said existed and actually overseeing a massive increase in the number of people coming to Australia on a 457? That is the alarming irony in this debate. This government sat on its hands while the 457s were increasing in number. Now, because the union movement have asked them to, they are making a political point. The new minister for immigration has said that there have been 10,000 abuses of 457s.

Mr Tudge interjecting—

He got that out of thin air, I say to my friend and colleague the member for Aston. Why do I say he got it out of thin air? Because he produced no evidence to substantiate his claim. In fact he was contradicted by his own immigration officers. Dr Wendy Southern, a senior official at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, said the following when asked at a Senate inquiry about the number of 10,000:

We certainly did not provide advice around a number of 10,000.

Then the First Assistant Secretary of the Migration and Visa Policy Division of DIAC, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, said:

I am not in a position to provide advice in terms of what guided the minister to talk about that number.

Then Stephen Bolton, Senior Adviser, Employment, Education and Training, at the Australian Chamber of Commerce, said:

Never, to my knowledge, has a figure so high being raised.'

This is the problem here: the government has concocted an argument for political purposes and to increase the patronage of the unions. Innes Willox, who is the head of the Australian Industry Group, says:

The claims of out-of-control 457 numbers are little more than union-inspired scare-mongering.

There is no other reason why the Labor Party is prepared to face this series of contradictions by their own senior officials, by industry groups and by the Prime Minister's and the minister's own words unless, of course, this is about payback to the unions at a time when the Prime Minister is at her weakest political point. The only thing standing between the Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd is the union leadership, and this is one of the demands of the union leadership.

We do not want employers right around this country to be faced with the extra paperwork that will flow from the provisions of this bill. One of the provisions requires that employers do 'labour market testing' before they go and hire someone on a 457. Labour market testing was already in for the years after 1996, it was deemed to be ineffective and so the caravan moved on. But the Labor Party is now saying to employers, 'You can't get someone here on a 457 unless you've got support from Commonwealth or state authorities, unless you have shown you have done all this work to try to find somebody who does not need to come here on a 457 and unless you have information showing that you have made a real effort in this regard.' This will only increase the costs to the employers who are looking for people to come on 457s.

The second element of this bill which we dislike intensely is that you are going to send Fair Work inspectors into every workplace to police these 457s. This element of intrusion will be an extra burden to business when we have seen that you cannot substantiate your false claims about 10,000 abuses. The fact is that you are spending more of taxpayers' money to create more Fair Work inspectors—

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