Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The Turnbull government's changes announced on 18 April to global 457 visas is causing chaos for companies that specialise in recruiting finance, education, engineering and IT workers. The government's changes focus only on the supply of overseas labour and do nothing to upskill Australians. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, has said that we are committed to 'make sure that at least 10 per cent of all the employees on major projects are apprentices'.

In my own electorate of Melbourne Ports, we are seeing results of the Victorian government's policies at the state level. The state Labor government, in contrast to the federal government, is working on infrastructure projects, such as the Melbourne Metro Rail Project, which, according to The Australian's Greg Brown, is a $10.9 billion project which will provide over 4,000 jobs from 2019 to 2022. Could you imagine the results if our federal government mandated that 10 per cent of apprentices, trainees and engineering cadets—as the Victorian government is doing—be part of any major project that receives Commonwealth dollars?

Simply changing the 457 visa program may hurt many of our nation's businesses and, in turn, harm our international competitiveness. I notice that in today's Financial Review Patrick Durkin refers to Randstad's CEO, Frank Ribuot, who is also involved with the French-Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Mr Durkin said about Mr Ribuot:

… he realised three of his top recruiters, an Englishman, a Dutchman and an Irishman, would soon be forced out of the country.

Mr Ribuot was quoted as saying,

I have top people who miss the March 18 cut-off by a matter of months …

He goes on to explain:

They have moved their families, sold their houses, paying taxes but will be left high and dry. Some of them have been here 22 months but under the rules had to be here 24 months.

In industries like IT, which Mr Randstad works in, finding the right person for the job can be hard, especially if the position requires specialised skills. The only solution to this is skills and training. We need to upskill our local workforce to fill these positions and not cut funding to TAFE and universities.

The Financial Review article claims that 50 per cent of people who will be impacted by the abolition of 457 immigration work visas are in senior management, 65 per cent of the people in business are in favour of keeping the existing 457 visas, 83 per cent said the changes would have a strong and extreme impact on the ability to attract overseas talent and 96 per cent said their businesses already contributed to the training and upskilling of Australians.

See this speech in context