Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the previous member's contribution. However, if he wants to sit in on hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, where we talk about bringing new Australians in to work in Australia, bringing people in from overseas, he will see that it's the Labor Party that opposes it every time. It's the Labor Party that says, 'These workers who are going to come into Australia are going to steal our jobs.' It's the Labor Party, driven by the unions, that oppose all of this. It's a bit rich to have someone all of a sudden saying this is a coalition fear. I think what we really have to understand is that the overseas workforce is such an important, critical component of not just agriculture but so many other industries. We need to embrace overseas workers—temporary, seasonal and also permanent. Greater Shepparton City, Moira Shire and Campaspe Shire councils have fought hard to create a Designated Area Migration Agreement for Goulburn Valley. These DAMAs are going to be critically important, as is the ag visa that Minister Littleproud has put together. They're going to be critically important for so many areas that need overseas workers.

It's been put by people opposed to these types of labour schemes that they're rife with people being exploited. It's not good enough if one per cent of one per cent is exploited. We have to do everything we can to ensure that overseas workers here in Australia are fairly paid and that exploitation is wiped out, but we also have to be careful that we don't let these people make this issue bigger than it actually is. They are simply weaponising this underpayment and wage theft issue to try and scuttle these programs. This is neither honest nor truthful. It is an incredibly minute number of people who have been exploited. We need to make sure that never happens so that the credibility of these overseas labour schemes is 100 per cent. That's something that is critically important for my electorate and critically important for many other regional and rural electorates.

It's not just some of these lower-paid dirty jobs where we're looking at labour shortages now; it's many of the trades. Trades that have been highly regarded for many years are struggling to find the workers that they need. In plumbing, tiling, roof tiling, plastering, painting and decorating, diesel mechanics, motor mechanics and many more the vacancies and availability of work that exists throughout regional Australia now are absolutely rife. The question we have to ask is: where are these workers going to come from? COVID has made it incredibly difficult, especially in hospitality. Nearly everywhere you go in Australia the hospitality offerings have got a little sign on the window saying 'jobs available' for waiters, waitresses, chefs, front of house, back of house. These are opportunities that possibly would have normally got picked up by overseas students who are no longer here in Australia because of COVID. So this is a very, very important issue.

I would just make sure that we don't attempt to rewrite history about the Labor Party. This is something that the Labor Party argue against point blank every time we get an opportunity to talk about migration policy. They've always been against bringing in overseas workers. They've always been against filling these vacancies with a ready-made workforce, because they have this inherent fear that somehow or other overseas workers are going to take Australian jobs. Well, the jobs that we're talking about are not being picked up by Australians at the moment. Australians are not putting their hand forward at the moment, as they haven't done historically and are probably not going to do so into the future. What we need to do is to look after our Australian businesses and give them the labour offerings they need so they can take their businesses forward.

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