Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment and strongly urge the government, in relation to these bills before us, to consider what's being asked. It's been at least 30 years since there's been a focus in this country on some free trade agreements. Increasingly in the community, in industry and amongst workers, people are asking: but are they really worth it? We hear a lot of rhetoric about how they create jobs, but where's the economic analysis to prove that the claims made when striking an agreement, when legislation is passed through this House, have actually been achieved? That is why one of the amendments, which focuses on independent economic modelling, is so critical—before, during and after. Whilst we are still waiting to learn whether the commitments made for the South Korea, Japan and China agreement have been achieved, we don't know the full impact or the cost of free trade agreements. That is where the government has a lot of work to do: to reassure people in our community that the agreements in the legislation before us will actually be good for Australian workers and Australian industry.

The single most important objective of trade policy should be to deliver benefits to the Australian economy and the community—to ensure that working people have access to good jobs, secure jobs and the creation of local jobs—yet with all of the rhetoric that we hear that these agreements will do so, have they previously delivered and will they deliver in the future?

These are questions that people are asking. In the thirty years since we've liberalised when it comes to free trade, whilst growth has been up, living standards and wages have been flatlining and, in some cases, are going backwards. Free trade agreements have been signed, yet we are losing industry and losing good, secure jobs. We are losing industry, and creating industry in areas which may not economically benefit everybody.

As to the agreements we have before us, I would just highlight some of the claims that have been made and ask some questions. There has been a lot of focus on how the agreements will create jobs and secure investment for our farmers. The problem is: we're in drought—a severe drought, a drought that's not ending. Do we have the supply to satisfy the new quotas? When it comes to grain, for example, with the grain quotas that have been achieved in all the free trade agreements, will we produce the crop this year, next year or the year after? The supply issue is not just in grain. If we look at sheepmeat, beef or any meat in our red meat sector, again the question has to be asked: what will be the impact of drought on producing the supply to satisfy these great new trade agreements? There's all this talk about how great the current and previous agreements are, but do we actually have the supply and the capacity to achieve them?

Then we ask the question: what are we losing on the other side? Let's talk about dairy. Dairy is a really vexed question, given that we don't know if we're even going to have a viable dairy industry going forward, particularly in areas like northern Victoria. Dairy farmers are leaving in droves. This government is confused. The Australian rhetoric is confused. The economy is confused. On the one hand, we're saying that these agreements are great and are going to create industry, and then, on the other hand, we're saying that the industry is collapsing because of factors not enabling us to secure it locally.

Then we could talk about the jobs in these industries and what they will create. They say that in the dairy industry the agreements could create up to 20 jobs—20 jobs—in an industry which is struggling to deal with drought, with a shortage of water, and which has its own recruitment problems. Agricultural jobs tend to be a big focus, yet we hear time and time again from farmers that they can't employ Australians to do the jobs. I guess that's why we need to increase the number of backpackers coming in from Indonesia, to do the jobs. Meat processing, which you would think would be staffed by Australians, is increasingly being staffed by working holidaymakers, backpackers and international students—overseas temporary workers.

We're being told that the agreements being put before us are good for jobs. But they're not Australian jobs. We have to then import the workers to work in these industries. This government has no plan for how to increase employment in these industries for Australians or how they're going to ensure that Australians get access to these jobs first. They've not implemented one of the recommendations that has come from the Migrant Workers Taskforce that was set up to investigate exploitation. All the agricultural industries that, they say, these agreements will benefit are the most exposed and the most at risk of worker exploitation, and people are competing against each other for temporary workers to come in from overseas and work. So when the government rants about how great these agreements are for jobs, I ask again: whose jobs? Which workers and which Australians will benefit?

There's talk as to these agreements about how they are great for vocational education and training. Again, we already have significant numbers of international students coming from these countries, before these agreements have been struck. There are about 10,000 coming from Hong Kong and 9,000 from Indonesia, already—international students coming to Australia to study and to work. Also, there is a question mark—you just have to ask any academic—about the quality of our higher education in this country and whether the education that international students are paying for is actually of good quality. That's a separate review and a separate process that's ongoing.

My concern is how they're treated as workers in this country. There are over 900,000 international students in this country that have work rights and they are an exploited underclass of worker. Report after report has exposed how they are treated in this country. They're classed by this government, by many economists and by that broad rhetoric as being a top export industry, but what they really are is an underclass of workers. A UNSW report recently found that a significant number of these workers were paid less than $12 an hour, and 43 per cent of these workers were paid less than $15 an hour, well below the minimum wage. When you start to talk about those kinds of figures—of 900,000 workers in this country being treated that way—you have to ask yourself: is this a good trade industry, when really what you're doing is creating an underclass of workers in this country? That's why the amendment that Labor's put forward that talks about the exploitation of temporary workers is really trying to push the government to sort that issue out. The government is asking Australians to believe in these free trade agreements when it's done very little to ensure that workers who come here to work in these industries that will benefit from these agreements, or who come here as an industry themselves in relation to international students, are not being treated properly here in this country and are victims of exploitation.

The Peru agreement talks about increased market access to sugar. It's really hard to take the government seriously when it talks about sugar market access when you talk to sugar farmers in Queensland who are still baffled about the sugar code and baffled about the future of their industry and who cite the same problems that other industries have in agriculture: we don't have the workforce, we don't have the water, we don't have the support that's required. Again it talks about how great it is for wine, sheep meat, horticulture and wheat products. Will we have the supply? Will we have the supply to satisfy these agreements? We talk about how great this is for jobs and industry, yet not really having the independent economic analysis to say if we have the industry to sell under these agreements.

Then we come to the impact of the growing problem that trade agreements are starting to focus on, like social aspects and the movement of people when it comes to these trade agreements—the movement of natural persons. We need to start to question: is it really the role of free trade agreements to be looking at the trading and movement of people? There are some concerns that have been raised in relation to who comes in under what visas. I'm not going to take the government at its word when it says that there will be no weakening of labour market testing when it comes to these agreements. The report that was put forward by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties said that Australia will waive labour market testing for business visitors, intracorporate transfers and independent executives. My question is: does this include the 400 visa? What safeguards are in place to ensure there is not manipulation of these visas to ensure it doesn't become a back door for big numbers of people to come in? The 400 visa, as some may or may not know, is the visa on which lots of trade assistants have come in to build the solar industry, because apparently we don't have the skills to build solar farms in this country. It has become a bit of a manipulation of this visa, and we are seeing very little effort by the government to close those loopholes down.

When it comes to these agreements, our community is concerned. They express their concerns daily. It's the secrecy in which these agreements have been struck that people are raising their concerns about. There have been concerns raised by nurses about the potential for foreign labour workers to come in under contractual services. We need to take this seriously and rule out that these agreements will be used to see more temporary workers come in and work as PSAs, work as nurses, or work in industries where the real issue and barrier is our lack of dealing with skills and lack of dealing with pay. We need to look at what contractual service could mean when it comes to other industries like housekeeping and hospitality. We've seen report after report exposing how temporary workers who come into this country in these industries are quite often exploited and underpaid. The government needs to rule out that this will occur. This creates, again, further tension.

The government also needs to take on board the request for independent economic modelling. We hear a lot of ranting and rhetoric about what's good about free trade agreements, but what are we losing? If you take what happened recently in the manufacturing sector, are we going to ensure that our industries are protected going forward and that we do have growth in industries? What's this government doing about the non-tariff barriers? If you talk to manufacturers, if you talk to businesses, if you talk to industry, if you talk to workers, they go, 'The agreement's there, but it's the non-tariff barriers that are really preventing us from being able to grow our industry.' It's the biggest complaint that you get about the China free trade agreement. When you talk to winemakers, they go, 'It doesn't mean anything for me because I can't actually get my wine off the port.' There's more and more red tape, yet, despite the calls from industry, despite the calls from businesses, there's been very little effort by this government to tackle the non-tariff barriers—the red tape, as it's been called.

There's a failure by this government to really implement any decent legislation when it comes to stopping dumping. Dumping is costing us jobs in this country. There's also a real failure by this government to address, as I've said, the concerns about worker exploitation under temporary work visa arrangements. All of this feeds into the challenges about why the government is putting all its eggs into this free trade agreement basket and calling them the great nirvana, when really it's failing to address the broader concerns and anxieties that Australian workers have. These anxieties are real and something that I hope the government takes on board when considering this. It is not enough just to pass free trade agreements and enter into them. It's what happens every day after.

The government's track record on free trade agreements is a lot of talk and a lot of rhetoric but not a lot of delivery. That is why independent economic analysis is so critical. Are they creating the jobs that have been promised? Are they growing the industries that have been promised? Are they actually ensuring that workers who come here in good faith are not being exploited and mistreated? These concerns that are being raised by workers' unions and civil society need to be addressed, they need to be considered if we are to have confidence in free trade going forward.

I've always stood in this place and said that we support fair trade, yet 'fair' is increasingly becoming a dirty word in the debate about trade. You can support trade and still believe in fair trade; it isn't one or the other. But, unfortunately, with this government, free trade agreements are the only positive economic narrative they have. Yet Australians are sceptical, and they have a right to be sceptical not just because of the points I've outlined but because of the points many others have outlined. (Time expired)

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