Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Migration and Other Legislation Amendment (Enhanced Integrity) Bill 2017. I want to say from the outset that Labor will support this bill. I welcome the news that the government has followed Labor's lead and is now finally taking some steps to protect vulnerable workers in this country. This legislation was first introduced in the House on Wednesday, 16 August 2017, and we are only debating this bill now. This goes to show the poor priorities of this government. Since this bill was introduced, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has become the Department of Home Affairs. The Prime Minister upgraded the immigration minister's title to keep the minister satisfied and the Prime Minister in his job. The immigration turned home affairs minister has punted his skilled migration responsibilities to the Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, and we now have a brand new Deputy Prime Minister. It goes to show that all of this has happened since the government introduced this legislation in the House back in August 2017. So much for the priorities of this government with respect to protecting vulnerable workers.

While the government have been fighting amongst themselves Labor has been getting on with the job and fighting for Australians. Ensuring the integrity of Australia's skilled migration program is essential to all workers. The bill will enable the Department of Home Affairs to collect tax file numbers, which will help streamline targeted and effective compliance activities. This means the department will be able to check that employers are paying their workers correctly and that visa holders are complying with the conditions of the visa.

The bill will ensure the department can publicly name businesses that breach their sponsorship obligations. This means people looking for work will be better informed about the businesses they're potentially going to work for. There are unfortunately unscrupulous bosses in Australia who take advantage of vulnerable workers, often temporary or overseas workers, and exploit them. We have seen report after report confirming this in the public domain. These abhorrent and disgusting acts not only exploit the most vulnerable workers in Australia, but they're also to the detriment of the pay and conditions of all Australian workers. This bill is a step in the right direction, but only a step. The Turnbull government has a long, long way to go to ensure the integrity of Australia's skilled migration program. This includes ensuring locals get the first shot at local jobs and genuinely protecting vulnerable workers, including migrant workers.

The bill before the House amends a number of pieces of legislation to support the integrity of the temporary and permanent employer sponsored skilled visa systems and programs, including the Migration Act, the Income Tax Assessment Act and the Taxation Administration Act. The Department of Home Affairs monitors sponsors of overseas workers to ensure they comply with their obligations under migration legislation and regulations. There are currently difficulties verifying that sponsors are paying visa holders correctly or simply checking if a visa holder is working for more than one employer. The bill will enable the department to collect, record, store and use the unique tax file numbers of applicants and holders of specified visas. It will aid in more streamlined, targeted and effective compliance activities, assessing the work undertaken in Australia for some permanent sponsored skilled visa applications and for research purposes. There's a new subsection which allows the secretary of the department to request the tax file number of a person who is an applicant for a visa or former holder of a visa as prescribed by the regulations. The regulation made for the purpose of the subsection will be subject to disallowance by either house of parliament, ensuring that there is parliamentary scrutiny over the kinds of visas that are prescribed for the purposes of this legislation. I welcome the guarantee of parliamentary scrutiny, something that the immigration minister seems to avoid at every opportunity in legislation that we have debated in this chamber.

The bill will amend divisions and parts of the Migration Act to expressly permit the minister to disclose information regarding sponsored sanctions to the public. This will authorise the department to publicly disclose details of businesses once a sanction has been imposed. Currently the department is only able to release limited information to the public regarding breaches of sponsorship obligations and is unable to advise informants of the outcome of their complaints.

I also note that the bill fixes up four incorrect references to sections of the Regulatory Powers Act. I always welcome the Turnbull government taking the time to clean up many of their sloppy mistakes and poor legislative drafting errors.

Labor invariably refers all amendments of the Migration Act to a Senate inquiry for further scrutiny. The Migration Act is complex, and given the government's poor track record when it comes to consultation, any amendments warrant further consultation and investigation. Labor referred the bill to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for a Senate inquiry. The committee received two submissions, one from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, as it then was, and one from the Law Council of Australia. I want to thank the Law Council of Australia for the integral and important work they do in ensuring that legislation introduced into the House and the Senate has no unintended consequences. The chair's report into the bill was received on 17 October 2017 and, again, there was no debate on this particular piece of legislation until today. Two recommendations: there was a minor mistake, according to the committee, and it recommended some amendments; but the substantial point simply was that the committee recommended the bill be passed—and Labor agrees.

Regrettably, some of the most exploited workers in Australia are migrant workers. It is no secret that, within Australia, there are employers who deliberately and systematically deny Australian and migrant workers their rights, freedoms and a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We hear stories about exploitation or abuses of workers on a far too regular basis. Whether I've been in Rockhampton or in Bendigo with the member for Bendigo or in Perth, as I was last week, I hear stories from unions, representatives of workers, migrants and Australians on the exploitation they're receiving at the hands of unscrupulous employers.

The Senate Education and Employment References Committee tabled a report in March 2016 entitled A national disgrace: the exploitation of temporary work visa holders, which details shocking instances of vulnerable, exploitative conditions faced by visa holders. A few weeks ago, the Fair Work Ombudsman handed down its report into the underpayment of contract cleaners in the Tasmanian supermarkets. The report revealed:

… rates of pay being offered by sub-contractors to supermarket cleaners were in some cases up to $26 below the applicable hourly rate.

As part of the report, a number of temporary visa holders were observed to have worked 'off the books' and were paid in cash, undertaking more hours of work than their visas permitted. The Fair Work Ombudsman stated:

This may be initiated by the employee because they perceive that this suits them or by the employer requiring the employee to do so.

This example shows how the exploitation of vulnerable workers and the undercutting of pay and conditions of local workers is tied. These are not mutually exclusive concerns. Under the Turnbull government, we're headed towards an easy-to-hire, easy-to-fire society, which is distorting job security and income distribution. In the absence of leadership from this out-of-touch government, Labor will continue to lead the way to stamp out underpayment and exploitation.

One of the most high profile and devastating cases of worker exploitation in recent times is the case of the systemic underpayment of the 7-Eleven workers across the country. I have previously detailed in this place the shocking pay and conditions that many temporary overseas workers received across hundreds of stores. Whilst attempting to make legitimate complaints about the number of hours he was working compared to the pay he was receiving, one 7-Eleven employee said:

The sad thing is nobody was listening, not even 7-Eleven. We gave our souls to the stores. We worked like slaves and no-one cared. 7-Eleven didn't care.

Following the ABC and Fairfax exposing the exploitation occurring at 7-Eleven, many other franchises were exposed in similar fashion, including Domino's, Caltex and Pizza Hut, as well as the Retail Flood Group including Donut King, Gloria Jeans, Brumby's and Crust Gourmet Pizza. In December, the chairman of 7-Eleven said that he was not confident the issue had 'gone away completely' and warned of an 'epidemic of underpayment' to foreign workers across the franchise sector.

Last financial year, 49 per cent of litigations the Fair Work Ombudsman filed in court involved a visa holder, and more than a third of those involved an international student. According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, there are more than 560,000 international students in Australia and research shows that 60 per cent believed raising a workplace issue with an employer would only make the issue worse. International students in Australia have been forced to work for free under fake training schemes or been forced to work for low wages with bosses using the threat of deportation as a form of intimidation. It's a disgrace.

I welcome the national crackdown by the Fair Work Ombudsman launched in September last year amid fears that thousands of international students were being exploited. It goes without saying that a crackdown on unscrupulous bosses from the ombudsman isn't enough. We need to do more in this place to pass legislation that adequately protects temporary workers. The appalling and endemic wage theft that is ripping off migrant workers in Australia further exposes the Prime Minister's failure to protect vulnerable workers.

The report Wage theft in Australia followed the national temporary migrant work survey undertaken by the University of New South Wales Sydney and UTS. This was an online survey of 4,322 people who had worked in Australia on a temporary visa. Nearly 30 per cent of migrant workers surveyed were paid $12 an hour or less—well below the minimum wage. Nearly half—49 per cent—were paid $15 an hour or less. Half of those surveyed reported that they never, ever received pay slips. This is not only bad for migrant workers but signals a race to the bottom for Australian workers under the coalition government. The report found that the worst paid jobs were in fruit and vegetable picking and farm work. It uncovered that almost one in seven participants in this sector earned $5 per hour or less, and nearly one-third—31 per cent—earned $10 an hour or less.

Recently, as I said, with the member for Bendigo I met with the NUW in Bendigo. I have met migrant workers across the country. I have met union representatives from Brisbane across to Perth and in the southern states as well. It is tragic to hear firsthand the personal stories of wage theft and exploitation. There have been stories out of Bundaberg, in my home state of Queensland, about how backpackers have been forced to line up at soup kitchens to get a meal after being short-changed by labour hire companies. Working holiday makers are often locked into overpriced accommodation and then forced into paying off their accumulated and unfair debt. We're talking about taking up accommodation and accumulating debt weeks before the picking season—and their subsequent pay—is even due to begin. More seriously, there have been claims of psychological and sexual exploitation, as well as tragic deaths.

These unfair, unlawful and unjust practices witnessed have no place in Australia's workplaces. This is not good enough. The Turnbull government must do much more to benefit all workers than this piece of legislation we have in the House today. These stories aren't meant to taint Australia's agricultural industry as a whole but to highlight the need to provide vulnerable workers with sufficient protection and to give them the opportunities that all Australians deserve. I urge the government to take the necessary steps to ensure that the provisions of this bill before the House are taken up, and more so—to protect all temporary workers.

The explanatory memorandum for the bill states that the amendments will 'implement measures to strengthen the integrity of Australia's temporary and permanent employer sponsored skilled migration programs'. In response to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the immigration minister stated:

The collection, use, recording and disclosure of tax file numbers will be prescribed in the Regulations. It is intended that the regulations will allow tax file number sharing in relation to a narrow list of subclasses, that is limited to temporary and permanent skilled visas, for research and compliance purposes. This includes identifying and preventing exploitation.

The types of visas the provisions of this bill will apply to will be prescribed by regulations. The minister has said that only temporary and permanent sponsored skilled visas will be included. This means the immigration minister isn't intending for this bill to cover other overseas workers, such as those on working holiday visa subclasses 417 and 462. The government is setting up its own loophole to get around. That's why this legislation is simply not good enough. We'll support it but so much more needs to be done.

I implore the government, the minister and the secretary to reconsider their limitation of the scope of any regulation and who will be covered. The horrible examples of exploitation continue across many visas. He needs to reconsider his plans in relation to this. By his own admission, the minister is effectively creating a loophole for this exploitation to continue, and that's not counting the 2,000 seasonal workers from Pacific islands. The government announced this program in September last year. It allows people from Pacific islands, our neighbours, to learn skills that they will eventually be able to apply in their own country. We note that this is an expansion of the seasonal worker program first introduced by the Labor government; however, the expanded program cannot be an opportunity for migrants to be exploited by shameless employers, even if the minister and the secretary won't list the relevant visa subclasses in regulation.

It's time for the government to do much more—to stamp out the gross underpayment of wages, the doctoring of pay records to conceal unlawful conduct, and the physical, sexual and psychological intimidation that workers are subjected to. When will the government do more? They need to do much better than this legislation. We'll support it, but they need to do much more. I've got great concerns that the government are going to sit on their hands and do nothing. We will support the legislation before the chamber today, but how about improvements and more legislation? Stop being so tardy about these matters.

See this speech in context