Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

On the mosque open day a week or so ago, I went down to the Gallipoli Mosque and was chatting with some of the Turkish-Australian community, which is very large in my electorate of Parramatta. I was reminded of one of the great stories of Australian migration, the Turkish migration of the late sixties, when Australia needed workers. And we needed a lot of them. We negotiated with the Turkish government to bring in a whole range of workers from Turkey. The Turkish government only wanted to give them to us temporarily; they wanted to take them back. We argued that we wanted to keep them, and we engaged, as Australia often does, in one of the great permanent migrations.

My community throughout Auburn and down through Granville, which is incredibly successful and a wonderful addition to our country, moved here in those times. So I am a great fan—and if you live in Parramatta you must be—of permanent migration. We have an extraordinary community of workers of all kinds that we needed at various times in our history, including the great IT migration at the height of the IT boom.

But the 457 visa is almost the opposite. It is the temporary visa that allows people to come to Australia for a particular reason, for particular periods of time, to work and then leave and go back to their home country. These 457s also fill an incredibly important role in this country. As a system that serves Australia well, it needs to be protected from the kinds of dreadful stories and behaviours that are circulating now.

You can see really clear examples of where 457s totally work. In the recent construction boom in mining, a mining company would require, say, 12,000 workers to build the mine and then only 2,000 workers to operate it. There is no way in the world a country like ours could train that number of workers for such a short period of time and then have them back on the unemployment lines again with nowhere else to go. In circumstances like that where we need workers to come in temporarily and fill a skill gap, 457 visas are incredibly valuable.

But I would like to remind the government—if members on that side have not been talking to their constituents about this—that there are a lot of people in our community who are currently extremely concerned about 457 visas and the way they are working. That is a bad thing, because we need our community to have faith in a system we need to work well.

The rumours that we hear and the stories that they tell me seem to be backed up by the submissions in the recent Senate inquiry and in the examples that have been exposed by members on this side in their speeches earlier tonight. We hear and we know that there are workers on 457 visas who are here because they can be paid less or because they can be employed under worse conditions. And they are treated that way. I meet people when I am out in mobile offices—who will not tell me their names and will not tell me where they work—who tell me they are being paid very low wages and being charged for rent and being charged to be here on 457 visas. This is appalling behaviour by employers but it is very difficult to get workers to come forward.

It is not a surprise when we find out that that behaviour extends through other areas as well. But on the 457s alone, I commend the government for introducing this bill to the House. It does something in its current form which is quite simple. Up until now, it has not been illegal to charge a worker to work for you on a 457 visa. We know there are employers that are doing that; they are literally saying to an employee, 'You pay me and I'll give you the visa', not the other way around. We have employers who we know are paying wages and then charging enormous amounts for very low-quality accommodation out the back in a container. We know employers are ripping off workers appallingly under 457s. We also know that one in five in a recent audit were non-compliant. That does not mean that all of those one in five were behaving this badly but it does mean we have a system that is appallingly exploited by some and disregarded in absolute terms by many.

So it is a good beginning for the government to make it unlawful for a sponsor to be paid by a visa applicant for a migration outcome, and for the government to enforce that provision by a robust penalty and conviction framework. That is the intention of this bill and that is a very good thing. I think it would probably surprise a lot of Australians that the behaviour that I described, of essentially enslaving people who are dependent on you to keep their visa, is not illegal at this point. But it will be when this bill passes the parliament.

We on this side of the House believe it is just a beginning and would like to see it go much further. For a start, we know—and I think all Australians know—that this exploitative behaviour does not just extend to 457s. We have seen it in the 7-Eleven case, and for those of us who talk to our constituents a lot it is probably not a surprise that students are being exploited. I remember that, when we were first elected in 2007, we had extensive exploitation in the student visa category and we had a lot of cleaning up to do over about the first two years of our government. That was not pleasant for us or for the people involved, but we did it. So it is not a surprise to find that students are still being exploited. We hear the rumours of restaurants paying $5 an hour or even asking people to work for free as a condition of their student visas. It is a common story and very difficult to prove, because people will not come forward because they are afraid of losing their visa if they do, but we hear of those stories.

We also have seen the expose of working holiday visa holders being sexually harassed, asked for sexual favours and exploited on various properties around Australia as well, so the exploitation that 457 visa holders endure appears to be flowing through a range of other visa holders as well.

We in our amendments, which will be presented in the Senate but I would like to talk through now, propose to expand the provisions of the bill so that it applies to all work related visas, sponsored and non-sponsored, including working holiday and student visas. Again, the Australian public needs to have confidence in these visas. They need to believe that these visas are not being used to drive down the wages of Australians or to exploit people who come here in good faith and provide a role which we need them to do. We actually need people to come and work in those regional areas. We need people to come and fill in the skill gaps. We as a nation would be appalled to think that we are exploiting people in that way. We are a developed country and we are better than that.

We seek to expand the scope of the bill. We also seek to protect visa holders who have been coerced by the sponsor and are including an amendment that says a penalty, including cancellation of a visa, cannot be applied to a visa holder who is found to have been coerced by the sponsor or related third party into offering, making, asking for or receiving a benefit. Similarly, the minister should not be able to cancel the visa of a person who has been subjected to human trafficking, forced labour or slavery offences under the Criminal Code.

We are also seeking to increase the penalty for employers or visa holders complicit in asking for, offering, making or receiving a payment. In other words, if the employer or the visa holder is complicit in this, we think the penalties the government is suggesting should be increased. Currently in the bill, the criminal offences have a maximum penalty of two years or a fine of $64,800 for individuals and $324,000 for corporate bodies, but there is evidence that the financial gains from committing these offences can be as much as $70,000 for an individual visa holder and up to $700,000 for a sponsor dealing with multiple visa holders, so the rewards for a person exploiting these visa conditions are extraordinary and the penalties in this bill do not match the reality of the return to those who are doing the wrong thing.

We are also looking to protect in particular student visas and people on working holidays from being forced to act as contractors and subcontractors. We are suggesting that people on student visas and working holidays be prohibited from obtaining an ABN and therefore prevented from acting as contractors or subcontractors. This would help reduce the risk of exploitation by ensuring that the visa holders work under a contract of employment, and in the case of students it would also enhance the ability of regulators to confirm that they are working the appropriate number of hours per fortnight, consistent with their visa conditions.

We are also seeking increased whistleblower protection so the whistleblowers who report instances of charging for sponsorship related events should have adequate protections. This would further enhance the penalties introduced by the bill and do more to reduce the exploitation of vulnerable workers.

We are also asking that the minister table an annual report on the operation and impact of the provisions. The bill does not currently impose any reporting obligations on the minister, and such a requirement would enhance the accountability and transparency of the system and act as an additional deterrent to sponsors.

We are also asking that civil penalty proceedings be able to be brought by unions in relation to the existing offences and civil penalties section of the Migration Act and the new civil penalty provisions. The model used in the Fair Work Act is the recommended approach. Allowing unions to bring civil penalty proceedings relating to worker exploitation will increase the resources applied to addressing this behaviour.

I strongly urge the government to consider improving this bill by adopting these amendments. Their bill is a good start but we have a long way to go on this, and 457 visa holders are not the only ones who need protecting. We have seen the treatment of the 7-Eleven workers. That is the one that has been exposed. Rumour and evidence to the Senate inquiry indicates that it is far more widespread than 7-Eleven alone, and we as a nation can do much better in protecting those who come to Australia in good faith to work for this country at a time that we need them. I strongly commend the amendments to the government.

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