Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important piece of legislation before us today, the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023. At the outset, in making my remarks in support of the bill, I want to acknowledge the many workers over many years who have advocated for change so that migrant workers would not be exploited in a country like Australia. I acknowledge the Migrant Workers Centre, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, the United Workers Union and so many other organisations who have spoken out over many years, particularly workers who, despite risk and fear in speaking out about their own exploitation, have courageously come forward about what has been an absolute injustice in this country, with coercion, wage theft and exploitation taking place. The reason that these workers so bravely spoke out was to bring about change—the kind of change our government is implementing through this bill—to make sure that no other migrant workers experience what they went through. This is about real justice, at last. It comes from over a decade of work by so many brave people determined to see change. I'm really proud to stand here as a member of a Labor government that is making this change.

In my work before coming to this place, I heard many stories. I heard from people right across the country about their experiences. For a moment, let's imagine the farm worker in regional Victoria. They have been employed to pick vegetables, cash in hand, in a regional community. They are underpaid, sometimes earning as little as $5 an hour. They are forced to live in a dilapidated shack with eight others. The employer insists on deducting money from their pay, at a cost of $200 a week, for this shabby accommodation. One of the workers is sexually assaulted by a supervisor and is not taken seriously when they come forward and speak to the police about it. Having come forward, they are scared about what will happen. Will they be able to stay in Australia? Will their visas be signed off by their employer? This is a terrible story, but, unfortunately, it is one that too many people in our country have experienced. Imagine you're working in a poultry boning shed. You live in the western suburbs of Melbourne, and every day you're transported in a white van to your employer—again, paid cash in hand. You're bullied, harassed, injured at work and too afraid to speak out, lest you be punished for doing so. Australia is a better country than these stories suggest, and I'm really pleased that we're taking the exploitation of migrant workers so seriously through this bill.

This package of reforms is designed to confront head-on some of the problems that I've described. One in six recent migrants to Australia are paid less than the minimum wage. This exploitation hurts us all. Of course it hurts the individual worker, but it also drives down wages and conditions for every worker. We see exploitation all around us, and, where others have failed, our government is committed to addressing it. This bill will implement key recommendations from Professor Allan Fels's Report of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce, the recommendations of which were not taken seriously by the previous government. It is now up to us to implement the recommendations in full to protect workers as much as we can.

There are new criminal offences for using a person's migration status to exploit them in the workplace—this is recommendation 19 from the taskforce. There is a new tool to prohibit employers engaged in exploitative practices from hiring workers on temporary visas for a period of time—this is recommendation 20 from the taskforce. And the bill will go further. There will be high penalties for those who do the wrong thing.

The ABF will receive new compliance tools, which is really important because, while it is obviously very important that we have laws in place to prevent the exploitation of workers, we need to make sure that these are implemented properly through effective compliance. We are repealing the part of the Migration Act that makes it a criminal penalty for workers to breach their visa conditions—effectively criminalising speaking up. That is a key part of the change we're making today, which is to shift the onus, to shift who needs to be responsible for the terrible things that we are seeing in workplaces across our country, and to really be part of ensuring that justice is truly able to be pursued where it needs to be.

We have been taking the work of the Migrant Workers Taskforce and the work of a range of other organisations really seriously for many years. We know that recent migrants are 40 per cent more likely to be underpaid than long-term residents with the same skills and experiences who work in the same job. We know that temporary visa holders make up four per cent of the workforce, but in 2021-22 they made up 26 per cent of all litigation initiated for breaching the Fair Work Act, so we can clearly see that the exploitation of migrant workers is a considerable problem in our community.

The new criminal employer sanctions that we're introducing in this bill will mean that coercing people to work in breach of their visa conditions will become a new criminal and civil offence, and the penalty for doing so will be up to two years in prison or 360 penalty units. This is a really important deterrent to employers who might be considering exploiting workers due to visa conditions. We know that for many workers one of the barriers to coming forward and speaking out about things like underpayment and unsafe workplaces is that they're really worried that it will affect their visa conditions. So we should also expect to see more people having the courage to come forward and stand up for their rights.

We will be prohibiting employers and individuals who have done the wrong thing in the past from hiring future workers on temporary visas. The triggers for prohibition will include court orders and noncompliance with migration and employment law. Where visuals are subject to prohibition notices, the minister will be publish the relevant details on the department's website. This is a really important step, as there is currently no ability to prevent employers who have been sanctioned under the Migration Act from hiring international students or backpackers despite the vulnerabilities these workers face. We'll see some unscrupulous employers be unable to continue exploit very vulnerable people.

We're going to align and increase penalties for work-related breaches with the maximum penalties available under the Migration Act. This will see penalties increase from 60 units to 240 units, sending a really important deterrence message. We will also be able to make sure that enforceable undertakings for work-related breaches are possible, seeking to use similar provisions under the Migration Act for the Australian Border Force, providing them with additional tools in their enforcement approach. As I mentioned before, it's all well and good for us to have the laws in place, but we need to be able to ensure that they are being effectively enforced.

There are a range of other amendments that we are making here, and there are a range of other things that our government is doing to ensure that we finally do what's required to implement the key recommendations of the Migrant Workers Taskforce report. We have seen over the last decade an absolute crisis of exploitation in workplaces across the country.

So I mentioned a couple of examples at the beginning of my contribution here today, but there are others that people may be well familiar with, like the 7-Eleven scandal, which began a lot of the work that led to the Migrant Workers Taskforce. We've seen, through the Four Corners episode slaving away from 2015—quite some time ago—brave horticulture workers share their stories about what their experiences were, and yet we are now, in 2023, finally seeing the effective action being taken by our government.

The task force reported to the Morrison government in 2019, and, unfortunately, not much had progressed from that point. Clearly, this was not a priority for the previous government. It was not taken seriously. Our government takes tackling exploitation really seriously. One of the big issues that we saw as well over the last 10 years was a preference from the previous government for temporary visas rather than permanent visas. What that effectively does for a lot of people is that it makes it easy for unscrupulous employers to target vulnerable workers because they know that they can use the temporary visa status to coerce people and make them feel vulnerable and insecure in this country. Those opposite also created a backlog of almost one million visa applications. So, clearly, they were not taking their responsibility in relation to migration very seriously, neglecting basic administrative tasks and looking the other way.

This is despite the fact that so many different organisations, advocacy groups and individuals gave advice that we have a severe problem with exploitation in this country and that action needs to be taken. Of course, that includes Professor Allan Fels, who was the chair of the Migrant Workers Taskforce. It includes the Migrant Justice Institute and Human Rights Law Centre. It also includes the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance, the peak industry body in horticulture. Those members represent half the industry turnover of Australian fresh produce. They've said that this bill supports the integrity of visa programs and contributes to whole-of-government initiatives to combat migrant worker exploitation. The Grattan Institute have supported this. Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, the work of the Migrant Workers Centre and the Victorian Trades Hall Council, as well as the Australian Council of Trade Unions, spoke out early on about these issues, which must be noted and commended.

There is a lot of work to be done to make sure that everyone in our country in a workplace is treated with respect and is safe. Of course, the implementation of all the recommendations from the Respect@Work report that our government implemented is also really significant to provide that positive duty to employers to ensure that workplaces are free from sexual harassment and discrimination. That is something that, of course, does affect migrant workers too, and I have seen firsthand the terrible impacts of that in workplaces where there are a lot of migrant workers employed.

All in all, our government is taking the issue of improving the migration and visa system really seriously. We're taking issues of workplace safety really seriously, and we're making sure that we're correctly looking at who needs to be punished for instances where there have been breaches of visas, where people have been coerced to do so because of the vulnerability to being exploited by unscrupulous employers.

I'm pleased that, at last—after decades of work from lots of people right around the country and, of course, after many brave workers have spoken out about their experiences to finally get justice and change in this world—our government is taking the steps that need to be taken to make sure that everyone is safe at work and is not punished for speaking out by having their visa status threatened in this country. We're so much better than that.

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