Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a ridiculous motion. We're standing here supposed to celebrate the minister's fake crackdown on rorts in the temporary skilled migration scheme. The abolition of the 457 visa is politically motivated and won't work. It's a bandaid. It's replacing one visa with two others and fiddling the occupation list to remove a few that are hardly ever used. The fundamental point is: nothing will change without proper labour market testing. Labor supports proper labour market testing for skilled visas. The government does not. Nothing the government does will make any difference until it accepts its failure and introduces proper labour market testing for temporary skilled visas.

The rorts have not stopped with the minister's fake crackdown, as the shadow minister said. The same problems are just moving to other visas. Last week, Fairfax reported shocking cases of rorts with the 400 visas. Chinese labourers were paid $1.90 an hour and Filipino metalworkers were paid $4.90 an hour, wreaking devastation on what little is left of the Australian shipping industry. We've got clear evidence of positions that used to be filled by 457 workers now being filled by even more exploitable ultra-short-term workers on 400 visas.

The short stay specialist 400 visa is supposed to be for highly specialised workers, where their skills are not available in Australia. The government is very secretive about this visa. Since being elected, the number of 400 visas each year has exploded from 6,200 in 2012-13 to over 55,000 last year, and the experts are predicting even more this year. You may well ask: What for? What kinds of jobs? What kind of work? Well, no-one really knows. More than half are not specified or are in the 'other services' category. Experts say that for bad employers this lack of transparency makes this visa even easier to rort than the 457 visa. The problem is not migration per se. It's not migrants. There's nothing wrong with wanting to stay in the country. It's when businesses rort and misuse the program.

We have had numerous reports of 400 visas being issued by the department in 24 hours. How on earth could they be confident if that's the level of scrutiny given? It appears, from my research, the department are breaching their own Procedures Advice Manual, which says:

Delegates need to be cautious about attempts to engage overseas workers which may have more to do with reducing costs by circumventing local salaries ... than genuine non-availability of workers.

They figure that out in 24 hours, apparently. A senior departmental officer has admitted there is no labour market testing. They just believe what the applicant says and issue the visas like lollies. If the minister wants the department to change their approach, he could instruct them to do so today—but he has not.

More people have approached me. There are more shocking cases in the shipping industry—like Greg, a highly skilled engineer from Western Australia. He has been out of work for 16 months. He'll lose the roof over his head in the next couple of months and he has given up. Greg's wife is Ukrainian and right now they are in war-torn Ukraine, with their four-year-old son, looking for an apartment to try to get skilled work. Meanwhile, the minister has issued 31 400-class visas for officers on the vessel POSH Arcadia to work in Western Australia from August to December 2017, including one for a worker from the Ukraine. This is work that Greg and others could do. Greg goes to the Ukraine, and Ukrainians get visas to work here in work that he could do. On Saturday, I spoke to Michael from Victoria. He applied for this work. He's an experienced chief engineer. He's ready to work in Western Australia or anywhere, but the minister issues 400-class visas instead.

It's also clear these rorts are extending beyond the shipping industry. I have heard of concerns already in building and electrical industries and of IT companies rotating cheap labour through on three- to six-month job lots. There are lower wages and it's also lowering our tax take, because they're not here for long enough to pay much tax. The minister's response to all of this was in the paper last weekend. He said that the mess was all Labor's fault because they introduced the visa in 2012. He put aside the very unfortunate fact that the Liberals had been in government for four years; they presided over an explosion. He doesn't mention that it was the Liberal government that quietly doubled the length of time of this visa, the 400 visa, from three months to six months in late 2014.

The minister's other line is: 'Don't worry. I'm doing a review of lots of visas, so I will fix everything at some point, sometime later on.' Well, kicking the can down the road is not good enough. The minister must deal with this now—pronto, today. I say to him: tell your department to stop issuing the visas like lollies. You could fix this. Call them now. The minister may not be able to get through on the phones, of course, because he has cut so many staff that they're not very good at answering the phones. He's probably got them too busy issuing the dodgy visas. He'd have to write them a letter! The minister must act quickly or more Aussie workers like Greg, like Michael and like Gary will be sent to the scrap heap and have to wait for a Labor government to fix this.

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