Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the Migration Amendment (Charging for a Migration Outcome) Bill 2015.

This bill seeks to legislate measures recommended by the independent review into the integrity of the subclass 457 visa program. The recommendation was that it be made unlawful for a sponsor to be paid by visa applicants for a migration outcome and that this be reinforced by a robust penalty-and-conviction framework.

The review was limited to the 457 visa, but this amendment will make charging for a migration outcome unlawful in relation to a broader range of skilled work visa programs, namely those that have either a sponsor or a nomination element. The penalties will apply where a benefit is asked for, received, offered or provided. This behaviour would be unlawful where an inducement is offered to a sponsor in order to secure a visa or, conversely, initiated by the sponsor—for example, paying the visa holder less than they are entitled to in a transaction for a visa or requesting separate payment in return for continuing as a sponsor. These are all complex scenarios that, unfortunately, we have found to be happening in our communities.

In fact, I think it is fair to say that as a country we have reached a tipping point in this area. There are 800,000 visiting workers in this country, and what we have seen exposed across the last 18 months is rife exploitation of some of those workers. This is exploitation of people who come to our country to work—their services have been sought—only to find that they are being exploited. They are being paid less than at Australian standards, they are working in conditions that are less than Australia accepts as standard working conditions and they are being further rorted in some cases by being asked to pay for the privilege to be exploited.

In terms of what this amendment goes to: Labor welcomes the legislation as a first step in trying to address exploitation and fraud in the visa system. It could, however, go further than this amendment put before us. It is fair to say that Australians are appalled at the levels of exploitation that we are seeing in our communities. They are appalled at the thought that employers or sponsors would be profiting from an immigration outcome sought under circumstances where working visas have been sought and provided to fill a skilled migration need. We can no longer allow our naivety in this area to be an excuse for exploitation of guest workers.

I think it is fair to say that as a broad community, across the nation we have embraced the notion of a guest worker to fill a skilled migration need but have been shocked at the organisation and the propensity to exploit the system—to game the system—and to exploit workers while they are guests in our country. I suppose I best encapsulate this by going back to my own community, where I have seen some of these cases and realised for the first time that the scenes that I have watched for many years in television dramas and movies based overseas, where workers live in horror or dependency on sponsors, are no longer a fiction in our suburbs but the reality for some people who are living amongst us.

So this legislation is a good first step, but I think it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge the level to which the rorting of the system and the exploitation have occurred. We have a history going back to last May, where workplace audits by the Fair Work Ombudsman painted a pretty grim picture. The report suggested one in five guest workers could be underpaid or working in jobs that they should not be doing. The report said there were 6,000 requests for assistance from the Fair Work Ombudsman from people on working visas in our communities—6,000 requests. It is an extraordinary number when you consider that many of the people we are talking about have limited English and limited capacity to access lawyers, particularly if they are being underpaid. When you consider the numbers of people we are talking about, on the one hand 6,000 seems a lot of people to make a complaint, but on the other hand it is merely scratching the surface in terms of the number of those who could be in these categories.

Then we saw the Fairfax Media and Monash University joint investigation recently, which revealed the extent to which thousands of temporary workers were being exploited and underpaid. This investigation exposed that 80 per cent of foreign language ads were offering wages below legal rates and that people were blatantly advertising black jobs, as they were called. It is worth noting here today that when that came to light Minister Cash's response was wrapped around the notions of self-regulation. Clearly, when an issue has become this endemic and the exploitation levels are this high, we are past the point of self-regulation.

So I welcome this amendment, which would see some part of that exploitation process closed, because these examples demonstrate how opportunistic, predatory and brazen those operating in this area can be. When we say that, of course, we are not talking about every company, sponsor or employer who brings in a guest worker to our country, but the numbers that have been exposed are daunting and shocking. They are numbers that speak to a Dickensian element in our communities and our neighbourhoods.

Of course, this was followed up by Adele Ferguson and Sarah Danckert in The Age, with their expose of 7-Eleven. What we saw was endemic and systemic among 7-Eleven franchisees, with some charging staff $7,000 to secure work visas and, in fact, with the business structure set up so that that was actually a separate revenue stream for the business. We had stories of fees from $25,000 to $70,000 to sponsor someone on a visa, and we had some student visa holders then enrolled in courses associated with 7-Eleven franchisees. So we had an entire business model set up around the exploitation and, of course, the underpayment. It was set up to have someone knowingly in breach of their visa but then left in a situation where, having at first paid the amount, they could hardly be one of the 6,000 who rang the ombudsman to complain.

So it is very fair to say that Australians will welcome this amendment, which is going to close at least one of those loopholes, but of course there is another element here that those opposite need to think about carefully, and that is the changes that have been made to the English language test in this space, because of course any worker in this country filling a skilled migration gap who does not speak English is made more vulnerable, because the person that they have been dealing with, their employer, may be the only person that they can have a conversation with, and that conversation may not necessarily be in English. So they are caught, if you like, in a trap in that scenario.

For me, one of the important things that we need to say about this amendment is that we welcome the amendment and the fact that it will make it unlawful to pay for or to seek payment for an immigration outcome in this country, where we have seen it being exploited to those levels, but really one of the biggest issues it raises is around enforcement and resourcing. Of course, we can pass the amendment, but then how that law will be enforced and the resourcing of that enforcement is critical. I would say to those opposite at this point in time that one of the things that we as a country have always relied on in the space of workplace conditions and a fair day's pay for a fair day's work has been that in our civilised society we have collective bargaining and trade unions. I would say to those opposite that, when you are talking about limiting right of entry for unions, if you think about that in this space, you are actually shutting the door to a form of collective action that could in fact support the enforcement of this regime.

Labor support, as I do, the amendment that we have before us, and we believe that the initiatives in the bill are a good first step in trying to address exploitation and fraud in the visa system. We would like to see it go further. We would like to see it reflect more the recommendations of the 457 review aimed at improving the effectiveness of the visa subclass, which the government has supported but not yet implemented. That could have been introduced as part of this bill.

For example, we would like there to have been a new sponsor obligation to ensure that the cost to the sponsor of any training contribution cannot be passed on to a 457 visa holder or third party, that sponsors be required to include as part of their signed employment contract a summary of visa holder rights prepared by the DIBP and the FWOs Fair Work Information Statement, and that a change to 457 visa conditions be introduced to place an obligation on the visa holder to provide the department with their Australian tax file number. These were all recommendations that it seems to me would have been sensible to have been carried into this piece of legislation. We would also like to see, or I would like to see, further additional integrity measures for temporary work visas more generally. That should be debated by the parliament.

In my electorate, in my community, I know of cases where people have been a part of this exploitation and this gaming of our system. I am thinking of one individual that, of course, I would choose not to name in any public space because they have already suffered enough. Imagine someone with little English, someone who saw temporary work in this country as a potential ticket to a life in Australia, and imagine that that person is a woman. Imagine that person has a 10-day-old child in this country and feels indebted to their sponsor and to their employer. Imagine that person seeks help and someone suggests that they speak to their local MP. Imagine then that someone else says, 'That's a bad idea because bringing it to the attention of a member of parliament may mean that you are summarily sent home.'

I think it is important that in this chamber we understand that the workers that we are talking about are not in a position to argue their rights. They are living in a world where they do not understand the language or, for that matter, the law. They are open to exploitation. They are being exploited on our watch.

I would urge this parliament to go further than we have done with this amendment, do a thorough review of the working class visas that we have operating and bring into play measures that will give Australians assurances that, on their watch, these things are stopped. We need to acknowledge that we may have been naïve and we may have allowed a system to be established where exploitation is rife but, as a parliament, we will take actions to protect individual rights and ensure that people are no longer exploited.

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