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

I will start with a positive observation that the Migration Amendment (Skilling Australians Fund) Bill 2017 is not completely terrible. I think that's an important thing to remark on. I've spoken on a number of pieces of legislation introduced by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection since joining this House. It did take me a little while to realise that you do have to be sceptical, because much of the legislation which this minister brings to the House is not serious; it's designed for stunts. Throw a bit of red meat to the right-wing base. Try a bit of leftie baiting, as he has told the world he likes to do. I think the first piece that I spoke on was an outrageous bill, which has hopefully died a death stuck in the Senate, where the minister tried to claim for himself a power buried in a little clause there to kick people out on a visa revalidation based on the class of race. So you could pick people of a particular race and just invalidate their visas. And who could forget the university-level grammar test to become a citizen of this country? If he were brave enough to come and dine in Melbourne, we could have a further chat about those bills.

This bill is not terrible, because, as has been well-remarked upon by previous speakers, it finally picks up the thrust of a lot of Labor policy, which we've been saying uphill, down dale, regarding temporary skilled visas. I will say at the outset, while we are finishing the positive bits, that I come to this debate as someone who fully recognises there is a positive, important and often critical role for temporary skilled migration and, indeed, permanent skilled migration to supplement our labour force. Before I entered the parliament, I worked in the Victorian Public Service and for some time had responsibility for the skilled and business migration programs as a public servant working for both sides of politics, so I well understand the labour market analysis which needs to underlie these kinds of decisions and the import to the economy and to businesses of a well-targeted program where there are genuine skills shortages.

However, as always, you do have to look for the concerns in the bill and also understand the context. So the positive bit is the commonsense approach of using levies—higher levies, I would argue, as is our policy, as Senate committees have recommended. Indeed, Senate committees have recommended much higher levies than are proposed by the government, and my personal view is that there is a case for higher levies. But you use those levies to send a price signal. Imagine you're the employer and you're sitting there thinking: 'Well, I've got this skill gap. I kind of need someone to do this.' The easy option, too often, is just to sponsor someone—to go overseas and pluck someone in. Indeed, unscrupulous employers love that, as we've heard in previous bills—'protecting vulnerable workers', a misnomer if ever there was one for a bill—because there is a greater ability to exploit vulnerable temporary migrants using their temporary migration status.

It is too easy to reach overseas and sponsor someone instead of doing the right thing and training a local, looking for someone in the firm and thinking, 'Well, we can invest a few grand and train them up for that job.' By unashamedly using levies to send that price signal to employers to take it into account, it puts the acid on them to do the right thing by Australians and Australian workers. And obviously, it's a pretty logical thing to say that then the funds raised should be used to boost and supplement the skills and training market. So there is no problem with the principle, but there are two fundamental concerns about this bill which the shadow minister's amendments are seeking to address.

The first one is, again, quite a familiar trick for this government—the pea-and-thimble trick: 'We'll give with one hand; we'll take with the other. Nothing to see here. Don't look over there.' If you take the estimates seriously and even believe them, we might raise about $1.2 billion over four years. So we'll put these levies in. If you get enough temporary skilled migrants coming into the country and enough people paying these levies, you might raise $1.2 billion. You might not, though, of course, but you might, but you might not, but you might. Actually, the context is that $1.2 billion comes on the back of cuts of $2.8 billion to the training system. So the funds raised from this bill don't go even halfway to making up the damage that the government has caused through its cuts to the training system. The Abbott-Turnbull-Joyce government, or maybe one day the Abbott-Turnbull-Chester government—long live the revolution! We'll see how the member for Wide Bay votes on that. He's a thoughtful man; no doubt he's got a view. We'll talk about that another time. But $2.8 billion has been cut from the skills and training budget over five years, including $637 million in the last budget, What that has led to—and these are important figures; they're not contested figures; they're facts—is 140,000 fewer trainees and apprenticeships, including 41,000 fewer trade apprentices. This is a bandaid; you cut with one hand and you give with another. It's the same modus operandi: 'We'll cut $29 billion of school funding, or make it $27 billion, or make it $17 billion. But, magically, we'll call that a $10 billion boost.' We could get onto taxes, but that's a different topic, with the one-point tax plan.

With this bill, the Skilling Australians Fund could well be better named the 'cutting a bit less from the skills and training system and picking up a bit of Labor policy and hoping everyone won't notice' bill. Even if the government's projections are right—and there are doubts over their numbers—if the visa numbers go down, if you don't get enough temporary skilled migrants coming in, then you don't have enough money to fund the training system. I was just handed the Bills Digest which came out today, and I was looking through it in the time available. In the Bills Digest, the Australian government's comments are very clear:

From 2018-19, amounts available to the States from the Skilling Australians Fund will be determined by the revenue paid into the Fund.

So, if we don't get enough temporary migrants coming into the country, there's not enough money in the fund to fund the skills and training contributions that the Commonwealth has promised to the states, and they haven't promised to make up that funding. So it's getting kind of perverse, isn't it? If you don't get enough temporary migrants coming into the country, you don't have enough money to train Australians. Indeed, Professor Peter Noonan, who I actually know from a former life, a professorial fellow and one of the doyens of the Australian vocational training market, has summed it up very well in his submission. Perversely:

… revenue for the fund will be highest when skilled migration is highest, and lowest when employment of locally skilled workers is highest. That means the revenue stream for the fund will be counter-cyclical to the purpose for which it was established: to increase the proportion of locally trained workers and to lessen the reliance on temporary skilled migration visas.

So there's clearly going to be a problem there, and it sounds a pretty dumb and shaky foundation to me, anyway, to design the basis of the government's skills and training fund. For such a critical social and economic function as training skilled workers, maybe that's something the government could reflect on and realise they've got it wrong. Indeed, Labor's approach of saying, 'These funds should supplement, should boost, funding available, not form all of the funding available to the skills and training system,' is a better approach.

I was also struck by the data in the Bills Digest, which sets out starkly—clearly, indeed—that there are 22 trade worker occupations on the major national skills shortages list: air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanics, automotive electricians, roof tilers, sheet metal trades workers, solid plasterers, panelbeaters, fibrous plasterers, telecommunications trades workers—the list goes on. So, really, on the back of enormous cuts to the apprenticeship system, which have driven down apprenticeship numbers in this country, we're leaving the whole funding foundation of restoring that and fixing that problem to bringing in more temporary workers. As the Bills Digest quite well acknowledges, although there are other factors—of course, people make judgements about employment prospects—undeniably, as apprentices are engaged by employers with funding and other support from government, then the number of apprentices and trainees is also influenced by the Commonwealth, and state and territory, funding decisions. So there it is.

The second big problem, apart from the pea-and-thimble, give with one hand, take with the other aspect of the bill, is the labour market testing. The track record of this government—as the previous speaker, the member for Gorton, who's been the minister for the portfolio, knows well—indicates that this will be a sham. Labor's made this clear for years. I've spoken on other bills, other matters, with the shadow minister for immigration. There is the nonsense of the minister's fake crackdown on 457s—you fiddle the occupation lists. We had a war on antique dealers and goat herders, or goat farmers. The minister was doing something with goats—I'm not sure. He was stopping the goats! There was a war on all these occupations that no-one had actually used for 10 years. So you take these occupations off that no-one actually uses and say you've had a crackdown but refuse to detail proper labour market testing. The record speaks for itself.

Labor in government had clear, firm, tough rules to say that, if you wanted to get a foreign worker, before you could do that, you had to test the labour market, and do that properly, and see if there was anyone in Australia—anyone, anywhere—ready to do that job. Only then could you pick up the option of using the temporary skilled migration system. Okay, that sounds pretty good. What about the proposition at the heart of this? It's good to be clear on the principle. I reckon this one passes the pub test. If you guys are in doubt—I know sometimes that's the case—you could have a plebiscite. You could have a survey. You could check this proposition, which is: before you get a foreign worker, you should try properly to find or train an Australian worker. It's a proposition. Have a plebiscite. I note the member for Wide Bay is nodding, and I applaud you; I thank you for your support. It's a fair test; it's a commonsense test. As I said, it passes the pub test. So why is it so hard? Why is there this big say/do gap? We say one thing. Perhaps if we say 'tax cuts' enough, someone will stop focusing on the fact that they actually just raised taxes for most Australians—unless you're a high income earner, of course; they're special. It's blindly ideological. There's a pattern if you're this government: 'We hate scrutiny.'

It is important to mention the trade agreements, because, for all this waffle that 'we'll do some labour market testing', the minister wants power to introduce some regulations to say what the rules for labour market testing might be. We are not going to tell you what they are right now. It might be an ad on Facebook for five minutes between midnight and 1 am in Mildura, targeted there. That might satisfy his rules; we just don't know. The government has got this pattern of signing trade agreements. They talk this rubbish that somehow we are opposed to all trade agreements and that we are trashing the Hawke and Keating legacy. They're getting obsessed with the Hawke and Keating legacy—they're a little bit jealous. It is founded on this notion that all trade agreements are good. Just because they happen to get a deal, we should sign it, without scrutiny of the benefits, even if it embeds exempting labour market testing.

Let's say the minister did the right thing and put in place some proper rules, through the regulations, for labour market testing—not funny little sham ones but proper rules. The trade agreements that they're busy signing up now would override them. You could still bring in foreign workers using the trade agreements and not be subject to labour market testing.

The government is being dishonest in this, but I did see one submission which I'll at least call out as being honest. If you want to try to understand the basis of the government's ideological objection to proper labour market testing, I was captured by the submission by ACCI, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I don't agree with it, but at least they are honest. Everyone knows the fluid boundaries, the porous boundaries, between the people who often work for the Liberal government and work for ACCI—and that's fine; that's a thing—but their submission is at least honest and gives a good insight. They're often peas in a pod—like they were on penalty rates: 'Cut penalty rates; that's a good thing,' says ACCI, and off goes the government, 'Yeah, that's a good thing.' The ACCI submission very clearly says that we should abolish all labour market testing—all of it—because we should just trust employers. They said that labour market testing is:

… akin to asking employers to walk through wet cement—it is time consuming through the requirement (i) to advertise even when the employer knows through past experience there is no skilled worker suitable to meet their business need—

It could have been five years ago and they didn’t have a good time, so they'll just sponsor some temporary migrant workers.

That contrasts, I think, a little unfavourably with Labor's approach—a sensible approach—as was set out in the bill that the Leader of the Opposition introduced. The government could have supported that and not have done this Road to Damascus fake conversion to labour market testing. We had proper requirements in that bill. We had things like a mandatory requirement for all jobs to be advertised as part of labour market testing—you actually have to advertise them; a requirement that jobs be advertised for a minimum of four weeks—not five minutes on Facebook; a requirement—this is important when you have a look at ACCI's submission—that labour market testing should have been conducted no less than four months before you nominate a temporary skilled visa worker; a ban on the job advertisements that we've seen which target only overseas workers or specified visa classes to the exclusion of Australian citizens; and a crackdown on job ads—and this one is important, because we're seeing this in other industries and I've spoken before on it—that set unrealistic or unwarranted skills and experience requirements for vacant positions. There are some fake ads that say, 'We think you need 72 years of experience and four PhDs.' Or we hear: 'We couldn't find someone, so we'll just have to go overseas and look for someone,' or 'We couldn't find them there, but we just sponsored someone anyway.' We've seen examples of this kind of rorting going on.

So there is this blind ideology, this hatred of labour market testing. There's no basis to trust this government and say, 'Pass this. We'll give the minister a power. We'll trust you, Minister for Home Affairs and immigration and whatever else you can grab next week in the cabinet reshuffle, to introduce some good rules on labour market testing. We'll ignore the war on goat herders and antiques. We'll ignore all that and we'll trust you to do the right thing.' We say, 'No; there's a better way. You could mandate proper requirements for labour market testing in these laws, you could accept sensible changes, and you could put your money where your mouth is and do the right thing by Australian workers.'

See this speech in context