Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

because you know how many people are, unfortunately, still in ICU and still dying because of COVID-19. It seems a long way from when James Kwan was the first person to die, on 1 March 2020, from that insidious disease which has, unfortunately, swept throughout the whole world and taken so many lives.

Jobs and skills are important. As an aside, I am pleased that the member for Albury has been appointed the shadow minister for skills, TAFE and tertiary education in the state parliament. He'll do a good job. He'll keep the Minns Labor government honest and accountable. I commend him on his promotion and look forward to working with him, as a near neighbour, in our electorates in southern New South Wales to do what we can for jobs and skills. You ask any abattoir owner anywhere in regional Australia, and they will tell you that jobs and skills are so very important. They'll also tell you about the shortage of workers they have in filling those many positions. We all like protein—well, not all; perhaps the Greens don't, but most of us do! The member for Moreton likes his steak; his father was a butcher, and is a good man!

You talk to any abattoir proprietor—Chris Cummins, of Breakout Meats, in Cowra, is expanding his operations so he can potentially move into the US market. Heath Newton, of Junee abattoir, is a prime lamb specialist. Will Barton, in Gundagai, is so short of workers that he sends me pictures of himself on the kill room floor—and he doesn't want to be on the kill room floor; he wants to be out marketing his meat, which is some of the finest meat in all of Australia, but he can't do it because he's got to don the white coat and work on the slaughter room floor. Just before I came in here I spoke to Charlie Sheahan, the Mayor of the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council. He tells me the Australian Meat Group, which operates out of Frankston, in Melbourne, are the new owners—they've taken over from Manildra—of Cootamundra abattoir, which actually closed in February 2017 but AMG invested $170 million into that abattoir. It was slaughtering sheep when it closed. It's going to be multispecies, primarily cattle, when it reopens—sometime later this year, hopefully. With $170 million of investment, they're going to need workers, jobs and skills.

I look forward to potentially working with Senator Murray Watt, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, or whoever it needs to be, to make sure that they have got the jobs, skills and workers in that abattoir. To that end, I'm pleased that Minister Watt is meeting with EC Throsby—Brett Peterkin is the director and Nick Doherty is the CEO of that Young abattoir; they also operate out of Singleton—to do what they can about the Indonesian certificates. It's so important. We need these abattoirs to be their best selves, not just for our domestic supply but for those export markets, which, I might add, are growing agriculture to $100 billion by 2030. That was something that we did in government. It was something that we did as Nationals. It was something that the member beside me, the member for New England, did when he was the agriculture minister. It was something that the current Nationals leader certainly pursued in his time as minister for agriculture, and it is something he now pursues as the shadow minister. This is so important.

When it comes to jobs and skills, what we don't want to see, and what I find a bit insulting, is the provision by which the Pacific engagement visa has become a lottery. Australia shouldn't be a lottery. Coming to Australia and becoming an Australian citizen and getting on all the benefits that Australia has via welfare et cetera should not become a lottery for Pacific workers. When you talk to these Pacific leaders and go visit these Pacific countries, you learn that, in the past, when Pacific workers have come to Australia, they've learnt skills and trades and that sort of thing and returned to their countries much better for the opportunity and the experience. They've earned money here in both very skilled trades and some not so skilled trades and sent that money back home. In some of those countries, it's a large proportion of their GDP.

What this lottery system, I fear, is going to do is take the best and brightest. They can come to Australia with no guarantee that they'll work here for any longer than a day, and they'll be eligible for all the benefits that Australians have. It's a pathway to permanent residency, and some might argue that's a good thing, but we don't want a brain drain out of the Pacific either. We need to be good neighbours. We need to be a country which provides that opportunity for our Pacific friends without draining them of their best and brightest and hardest working, and we need to be able to—

Thank you, Member for Whitlam. Thank you for saying that you agree. It is important. As the shadow minister for international development and the Pacific, I urge the government to look at that very seriously because, when it comes to the Pacific, we have to be good neighbours. I commend the government for what they've done, building on the framework and the architecture that we put in place with the step-up in Pacific relations and negotiations, and I want to see that continued.

I must say that money in the budget last night for foreign aid and the Pacific, in particular, was a little bit further in the forward estimates than some might like to see, but it's important that Labor build on the good record that we had as a coalition government in this space and particularly in the Pacific. Many Pacific workers work in our meat-processing plants and in highly skilled areas as well. I'm not saying that meat-processing plants don't have highly skilled workers; they absolutely do. You look at Teys in Wagga Wagga and the investment that they've made in their chill-room. It's probably second to none in the Southern Hemisphere. They're exporting to the world. The meat that we provide out of the Riverina and elsewhere in country Australia is the best in the world. Our farmers should be very proud of that fact.

That's why, in relation to the Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill, we urge and encourage the government to adopt the very sensible, practical and pragmatic amendments that we've foreshadowed. They will certainly make sure that this legislation works effectively without it being just one more union slush fund and without it being one more appeasement to the unions. As I said before: everything in balance. Unions are important. They play an important part. I understand that; I get that.

See this speech in context