Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Sponsorship and Nomination Processes) Bill 2024. The Albanese Labor government is committed to fixing Australia's broken migration system and continuing to clean up the shocking mess left by the former coalition government in this space. We inherited a migration system that was broken, exposed to exploitation and not prepared for the reopening of the borders post COVID-19. Dr Martin Parkinson, who led the first independent review of migration in a generation, found that it was a deliberate decision to neglect the system, and that it was so badly broken that it required a 10-year rebuild.

The government's migration strategy, released last year in response to Dr Parkinson's review, builds a system that Australians can trust, helping us to get the skills we need while halving the migration intake. The strategy is a set of commitments to address a decade of neglect in Australia's visa system and support a more prosperous, fair and secure Australian labour market. If you are a worker, whether a local or a migrant, the migration strategy means stronger protections not only in terms of your wages and conditions but in the workplace as well. For businesses, it means getting the workers and skills you need to grow and be more productive.

This bill implements key commitments from the migration strategy. It amends the Migration Act 1958 to establish a legislative framework and a new approach to temporary skill migration in Australia in the form of a new skills in demand visa, which targets the skills Australia needs and promotes greater worker mobility. This is an important step in delivering a better-planned migration system, meeting Australia's skills needs and laying a strong foundation for the future. The legislation creates the income thresholds in indexation for the proposed streams of that visa. As well as streamlining labour market testing requirements. The bill will help secure the integrity of the skilled migration program by setting minimum income thresholds for temporary skilled migrants in the act and by legislating annual indexation of these income thresholds. It establishes a legislative basis to create a public register of approved sponsors, and provides that labour market testing be completed within six months—increased from four months—prior to the sponsor of a skilled migrant worker lodging a nomination.

I will go through these measures in detail. First, a key recommendation in the migration strategy was to develop a new skills in demand visa with full mobility and clear pathways to permanent residence. The new skills in demand visa is due to be implemented in December 2024.

There are three pathways. First, there is a specialist skills pathway that will attract high-skilled specialists to ensure Australia can quickly and easily recruit top talent. This will be open to migrants who earn more than $135,000 in any occupation per annum. The specialist skills stream will recognise these workers meet a national need that is beyond filling a narrowly defined gap in the labour market. Highly skilled migrants bring significant economic benefits. They are more likely to bring productivity-enhancing knowledge and ideas, and to create jobs for locals.

Second, a core skills pathway will help meet Australia's skills needs, and most temporary skilled migrants will come through that stream. This stream is designed to bring in skilled employees Australia needs now and in the future, to ensure we are able to provide ourselves with the goods and services we need to support our way of life. Applicants will need to have an occupation on the occupation list compiled by Jobs and Skills Australia and earn more than the current temporary skilled migration income threshold—commonly known as TSMIT—which was set at $73,150 as of 1 July this year. In addition to this, TSMIT will be renamed 'core skills income threshold'.

Third, there'll be an essential skills pathway which will support the migration of low-pay—that is, below TSMIT—workers with essential skills. The policy settings for this stream are still to be developed, and further announcements will be made in due course.

On the indexation of thresholds, the bill legislates the income thresholds for the specialist skills and core skills streams of the Skills in Demand visa and legislates that they're indexed annually in line with local Australian wages. Indexing these income thresholds is an important part of maintaining the integrity of the Migration Program over time, ensuring the temporary skills program remains targeted towards more highly skilled migrants and supporting the wages of migrants and Australians.

The provision of legislated minimum income thresholds for the streams in the Skills in Demand visa will ensure that people working on those visas are less vulnerable to exploitation. This will guarantee that migrant wages will increase alongside Australian wages and ensure Australian workers, and workers generally, receive fair remuneration through indexed salary thresholds. Indexing these thresholds is critical to protecting wages and conditions for local workers, something that the coalition was never capable of doing nor had the policy intent to do.

This is good for all workers, regardless of where they're from. This is about making sure the skilled migration system does what it says it does and helps us to maintain a social licence for our skilled migration program. It will put some downward pressure on net overseas migration.

Currently, indexation of the TSMIT needs to be done by amending regulations every year, something the coalition refused to do. Legislating the indexation in this way will mean the income thresholds always remain in line with Australian wages, and placing such a threshold in the act and making it subject to annual indexation, instead of continuing to specify it in a legislative instrument made by the minister, will provide greater certainty both for sponsors and for workers going forward while providing greater strength to restore integrity in the migration system.

For a long time, Labor called for indexation of these important salary thresholds. For too long, under the coalition these salaries were not indexed, and the TSMIT remained at $53,900 per annum from 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2023. Get that, Mr Deputy Speaker Young—for nearly 10 years the TSMIT remained the same. That has had the impact of driving down wages. Should I say that the former finance minister Mathias Cormann said that driving down wages was a deliberate design feature of the coalitions coalition's industrial policy? It is a key measure that they undertook to drive down wages in the workplaces of Australians.

When I was a shadow minister for immigration and border protection, we called for indexation of these important salary thresholds in the lead-up to the 2019 election. Again, in 2022, Labor had a commitment to raise the TSMIT, the minimum amount a migrant must be paid to be eligible for temporary skilled migration. At neither election did the LNP government, federally, support that. Given the opportunity, knowing Labor was prepared to do that, on neither occasion did they take the opportunity to be bipartisan and to lift the wages and conditions of Australians.

On 1 July 2023, we delivered on our promise, with the TSMIT increasing from $53,900 to $70,000, and it will be indexed to $73,150 from 1 July 2024 this year. Contrast that with those opposite. It was stagnant for nearly a decade, despite the fact that the now Leader of the Opposition commissioned a review into this income threshold before those two elections in 2019 and 2022 that I referred to. In 2017 the Leader of the Opposition commissioned a review of the TSMIT—two years before the 2019 election, when he was the Minister for Home Affairs, which recommended that review. It recommended it be indexed annually. But in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 they did not do it—at no stage, given the opportunity. They went from 2013 to 2017 without a review—nothing. Even though they were told to do it, they didn't do it. They completely ignored the recommendation. They had absolutely no interest in getting wages moving and no interest in managing the migration system properly by listening to that review, which they commissioned themselves.

In terms of streamlining labour market testing, the bill will make amendments to the Migration Act to make labour market testing valid for six months, up from four months, providing flexibility to businesses to meet their skills needs and labour market testing requirements while still being required to attempt to fill a position locally—local workers given a chance before a migrant worker is sponsored.

Finally, the bill supports greater transparency in the skilled migration system and supports the government's attempt to enable mobility for migrant workers. To enhance worker mobility and tackle temporary skilled migrant worker exploitation, in the Migration Strategy there was a commitment to establish a legislative framework to underpin a public register of approved worker sponsors. This is a list of businesses approved by the Department of Home Affairs to sponsor migrant workers. The public register will include the names of approved sponsors, the postcode associated with the approved sponsor's ABN, and the number of sponsored workers and their occupations. The register will assist with mobility by helping temporary skilled migrant workers to find a new sponsor if they wish to change jobs. That register will encourage transparency and is a resource for temporary skilled migrant workers to check that their sponsoring employer is legitimate and doing the right thing.

Again and again, whether it was in Ipswich, the Lockyer Valley or any part of South-East Queensland, or in regional Victoria, regional New South Wales or WA, when I was the shadow minister I recall meeting workers who were exploited during this time. Those opposite could have done this, they should have done this, but they failed to do this. It has taken a Labor government to do it.

There was a report by a parliamentary committee that looked at abuses in the migration area. There were strong recommendations in this area. It didn't take a report commissioned by the minister. There were ample reports about exploitation in this area, with recommendations which those opposite refused to take up. They refused to act on the exploitation of workers in the agricultural sector, in the mining sector, in retail and hospitality, in aged care and in child care. They refused to do it. They never acted on it.

If we include a postcode in the register of approved sponsors, it will enable migrants searching for mobility to identify employers nearby and it will increase the practicality of the register. This will provide greater protections and oversight transparency. It will help tackle migrant worker exploitation and the misuse of the visa system. The register will provide a resource to check that a sponsoring employer is legitimate, and allow for greater transparency, monitoring and oversight.

It's worth noting that the Skills in Demand visa and the broader Migration Strategy were subject to broad consultation across government, unions, business, civil society, the international education sector and the wider Australian community.

This bill draws on the key findings of the migration review and the 483 public submissions it received. The most egregious exploitation of workers—physical, financial, sexual—happened on the watch of those opposite. Review after review—some commissioned by them; others parliamentary—they did not act. This bill implements actions and commitments outlined in the Migration Strategy, after tripartite consultations with businesses and unions, including the Business Council of Australia and the ACTU.

I am confident the reforms in this bill will have a benefit for outer suburban and regional electorates like mine. This is a challenge for good employers as well as for those workers who work in the sector—migrants and Australians. We want a fair go in the workplace, we want a fair go for family run businesses, we want a fair go for businesses who do the right thing and we want our migration system to have integrity.

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