Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak in favour of the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023. I would like to acknowledge the fantastic contribution to this debate from my good friend just now, the member for Holt. Our parliament is so much richer for having you here. This is an important additional step that the Albanese Labor government is taking toward ensuring that all workers that work in Australia can be free from being exploited by unscrupulous employers—and they do exist out there.

Protecting the vulnerable and protecting workers is deeply embedded in the DNA of members of the Australian Labor Party. This is true of those within the parliamentary Labor Party and of the broader membership. The most eye-opening statistic amongst many worthy contenders is that up to one in six migrants are paid less than the minimum wage. This does not exist in isolation. Migrant workers being paid less than the minimum wage affects all workers. For, when employers think they've found a way to pay any kind of worker less than what is set at the base level and when left unchecked, it brings down the minimum standards for all of us, in not just wages but conditions too—unless mechanisms exist in law to deter and punish this kind of behaviour.

In fact, recent migrants are 40 per cent more likely to be underpaid than long-term residents who have the same level of skills and experience and who are doing the same job. Temporary visa holders comprise four per cent of our total workforce in Australia, but, within the 2021-22 year, migrant workers made up 26 per cent of all litigation initiated for breaching the Fair Work Act.

On the eve of the Australian Labor Party's National Conference in a few short weeks, I look back to our national platform that was endorsed back in 2021, where the section that is quite germane to this bill reads as follows:

Temporary overseas workers are vulnerable to exploitation and this exploitation affects those workers and all Australian workers by undermining their wages and conditions. Labor will ensure that migrant workers including temporary visa workers have access to adequate information on their workplace rights and how to join their union.

Another pertinent section reads:

Too often, temporary migrants end up exploited or underpaid with some employers abusing the system for cheap and disposable labour. Labor will always ensure that measures are implemented to protect all migrants from exploitation, including:

requiring temporary migrants to be paid in accordance with Australian awards or enterprise agreements and to have their wages paid into an Australian bank account;

ensuring temporary migrants are protected by Australian workplace law and are not exploited through sham contracting or unethical labour hire practices give them; and

offering them 'whistle-blower' status if they are providing evidence of exploitation.

This will be my first national conference as a member of this place and a member of the federal parliamentary Labor Party. There is a feeling of pride in making a contribution on legislation like this or any of the multitude of measures this government has introduced in this 47th Parliament that moves the dial closer to parity between employees and employers. In this instance, the pride I feel boils down to being part of supporting legislation in this place that accomplishes the parts of our platform that I mentioned earlier. And why might that be? Because, as I said earlier, it is in Labor's DNA to stand up for workers.

Further to this point, if one were to use private members' business as a litmus test for this theory and to seek the sheer extent of contrast from those opposite, I saw two motions last week. One was moved by the member for Holt on this exact issue, combating the exploitation of migrant workers in Australia. For the most part, it was an extremely gracious debate where we broke bread and agreed that a problem existed. Many anecdotes of exploitative practices that were aired were utterly reprehensible and observing of sanction, and we look forward to real action to combat this. Then we had the member for Sturt laying blame at the feet of the union movement. He couldn't imagine a world where any small-business owner might be tempted to engage a temporary migrant employee contrary to our industrial laws. The member for Sturt even went so far as to say the union movement's ultimate goal is to constrict migration. How does that stack up when key members of the opposition's brain trust, namely the Leader of the Opposition himself and the member for Hinkler, have criticised the government for letting migration levels rise to a slightly lower level than what they, when in government, modelled would occur prior to closing the borders at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their criticism can only mean they are advocating for the pandemic-era border closures—but, of course, Labor and unions are against migrant workers. Frankly, from now on, I am hoping those opposite do an appropriate amount of warm-up stretches before engaging in debate on immigration or industrial relations, because the flexibility they must possess to somehow occupy both sides of this argument and blame Labor is quite impressive. If I were a high school debating adjudicator, I would be awarding some pretty high marks for that effort, but it's just a game to some of them. On our side of the chamber, it is anything but. As those opposite point out until blue in the face, we are full of ex-union officials, myself being one of them. We have seen what exploitative workplace practices can look like in the real world and their effects on workers, not only on their hip pocket but also their self-esteem and mental health.

It doesn't matter where you were born or what conditions someone has to work in in Australia; if you are working here, you deserve the full complement of workplace rights as everyone else. Allowing the derogation of workers' rights, conditions, entitlements, and minimum standards of our domestic workforce will hurt our migrant workforce, and the opposite is just as true, too. But it is our migrant workforce that faces additional vulnerability and susceptibility to falling prey to unscrupulous practices. This bill particularly aims to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers, which is something that has been exposed for its prevalence through a number of reports.

A report of particular significance that has led to this bill is the one that the Migrant Workers' Taskforce handed down. Additionally, a slightly more contemporary report I will encourage members to read when they can was a report published by the Grattan Institute earlier this year called Short-changed: How to stop the exploitation of migrant workers in Australia. The Migrant Workers' Taskforce was commissioned to report to government largely due to the shocking revelations that were reported on in the media concerning 7-Eleven franchises—a company where migrant workers, namely international students, dominated its main workforce. Further investigations confirmed many of the reports by the media that workers were systematically underpaid, with franchisees going so far as to falsify records to hide these underpayments. It was quite evident that, mainly due to the prevalence of this transpiring amongst 7-Eleven franchises, the exploitation of migrant workers was baked into their business model in some of the most egregious ways.

The Migrant Workers' Taskforce report was handed down to the government in early 2019. To their credit, the government at the time gave a response to the report mere weeks afterwards. This was something the Morrison government was known to have form for. However, the time line after that response was handed down is more on brand for the former government. The recommendations of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce, in addition to the bill introduced by the previous government that lapsed in the 46th parliament, culminated in this government introducing its own bill—the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023. Without delving into every tiny detail contained within the bill, I will attempt to paint the measures contained within by way of broad strokes.

Part 1 of this bill introduces new employer sanctions against the Migration Act. This part implements recommendation 19 of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce report, which proposes that the government develops legislation so that a person who knowingly and unduly influences, pressures or coerces a temporary migrant worker to breach a condition of their visa is guilty of an offence. These circumstances will include circumstances where a person knowingly or recklessly coerces or exerts undue influence on a lawful noncitizen to work in breach of their work-related visa conditions, on an unlawful noncitizen to work to avoid an adverse effect on their continued presence in Australia, and on a lawful noncitizen to work to avoid an adverse effect on their immigration status or to avoid being unable to acquire the required information or documents regarding their work for visa purposes.

The maximum penalty associated with each of the offences listed above shall be two years imprisonment or 360 penalty units. The civil penalty associated with these offences is set at 240 penalty units, which, however, are distinct from the offences, given that the state of mind of a person is not required to be proven in order to form all of the required elements of the civil offences, meaning that if an employer coerces an international student to work more than the hours in their visa permits then the employer will be committing one of the offences above to a standard dependent on the circumstances involved.

These provisions satisfy a number of aims: to deter others, to punish those in breach and to protect migrant workers from coercive practices by employers that would find them in a breach of their visa conditions with respect to the manner that they can work and for the amount of time they can work during a given period of time. These exploitative practices against migrant workers need to be dealt with strongly. The amendments to the Migration Act in part 1 have been a very long time coming, much like the others proposed by the Migrant Workers' Taskforce.

Part 2 of the bill concerns the conditions in which an employer may be prohibited from employing temporary migrant workers. Through this part, the minister or their delegate can prohibit the hiring of additional workers on a temporary visa where an employer has underpaid or otherwise breached their obligation as an employer. The circumstances in which they can occur are also set out in this part, through how a person can be subject to a migrant worker sanction. Once a person has satisfied the criteria to be subject to a migrant worker sanction, the minister or delegate may declare that person to be a prohibited employer for a five-year period each time a person is subject to a migrant worker sanction.

This part further outlines what happens once someone has been declared a prohibited employer. Namely, the penalty for allowing a noncitizen to begin work, whether for reward or otherwise, is two years imprisonment or 360 penalty units, or 240 penalty units as a civil penalty. This part also provides an affirmative duty to name and shame prohibited employers on the department's webpage. Part 2 also provides for the procedures for the 12-month period after a person's term as a prohibited employer concludes, with a number of interim conditions imposed, such as the requirement to report on any new temporary migrants that are employed during this time.

Part 3 of the bill increases the pecuniary penalties that currently exist for work-related civil penalty breaches in the Migration Act and for breaches under existing employee sponsorship obligations in the Migration Act and the Migration Regulations 1994.

Part 4 of the bill establishes a framework whereby the minister or their delegate can enter into enforceable undertakings with an employer, labour hire company or other party that has committed a work-related offence or other such provisions under the Migration Act, which would include the new civil penalties and offences provisions within part 1 of the bill. Part 5 of the bill establishes a framework enabling an authorised officer to issue a compliance notice as an alternative to initiating court proceedings for contraventions of work related provisions of the Migration Act. Part 6 of the bill comprises a number of ancillary amendments.

I commend this bill to the House, and I would urge all members to support it to put to rest amendments to the Migration Act that have been sorely warranted and called for by several experts and a number of parliamentary committees. By virtue of the lapsed bill in the previous parliament, the Migration Amendment (Protecting Migrant Workers) Bill 2021, you could even extend that through to the opposition, given they were in government when introducing similar legislation into the 46th parliament.

This is one big step forward to eliminating exploitative employment practices against our migrant workforce. It's a workforce that Australian employers cannot take for granted, and employers can't abuse their fundamental rights and protections under Australian industrial law with wanton abandon without risking the full weight of that law by trying to do so. It has been flagged that this is by far not the complete cure, but these are measures that have been asked for now for a significant amount of time that will go a long way to addressing the problem and to minimising its prevalence in pockets of Australia whilst also maximising the likelihood of workers feeling comfortable enough to report breaches by prospective or former employers to the relevant authorities. I thank the House.

See this speech in context