Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This continent has a long history of migration. The first black feet were placed on the continent around 60,000 to 100,000 years ago in Queensland. The first white feet belonged to the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, who, on 26 February 1606, set foot on land at Pennefather River on the western side of Cape York. That was 164 years before Lieutenant Cook raised his flag at Possession Island in the Torres Strait. Interestingly, Torres sailed through but do not actually stop in Australia, but he still has the Torres Strait named after him.

Willem Janszoon wanted to call the place where he set foot New Zealand, but the name never actually took off. Just for the record, I want to say that Queensland had the name first, so we even had 'New Zealand' before New Zealand, as I am sure some people might be interested to hear. The place across the ditch should be called the 'second-best New Zealand', as I'm sure everyone in this chamber would testify.

We have a long history of migration, and it's good to see that Queensland was involved right from the start. Migration has always been central to the Australian story. Although, in the 1960s and 1970s, Queensland had a lower-than-normal intake of migrants, even through the great wave of migration that occurred after World War II; not as many came to Queensland.

There have been many iterations of migration schemes and policies, some of which we can be proud and some of which were downright shameful. In Queensland, we have a major city named after Townsville, a guy who was a slave trader in terms of blackbirding, which was the slave trade in Queensland. Sadly, it is still sometimes necessary these days to counter despicable anti-immigration rhetoric when it is used by those seeking to encourage fear and division in our society, especially some of those extremist parties, those fringe protest parties, who are even in the federal parliament.

Migration policies are shaped by the prevailing social, cultural and political norms and economic imperatives of different eras. I think it was Menzies, particularly, who saw the 4.2 million people arrive in the 40 years after the end of World War II. Those people brought with them cultures, languages, arts and food, and they bolstered the Australian workforce with their skills, expertise and labour. This was part of the 'populate or perish' drive for migration. It was a key component of the nation-building plan, and it led to a booming economy.

The numerous different approaches to migration through the years speak to the need to revise and update policy on a regular basis to both meet changing Australian requirements and benefit the nation—and to look at what is going on around the world. This did not happen under that conga line of Abbot, Turnbull, Morrison governments. At the end of the nine years of conservative chaos, the migration system was in such a mess that the independent reviewer, the very well-respected Dr Martin Parkinson, described it as 'badly broken' after years of 'deliberate neglect'. With a lack of direction during these years, migration did little to provide economic benefit, and it did not boost labour productivity. Whereas, it is actually the lowest hanging fruit. People arrive educated, fed and trained, and they're here on our shores ready to work. The migration system the Labor government inherited was exposed to exploitation. It was not working for business, workers or the Australia public, and it was in no way ready for the reopening of borders in early 2022.

In December 2023, the Albanese Labor government launched the Migration Strategy, a fresh and fit-for-purpose approach to migration. It's the cornerstone of this Labor government's commitment to fix the broken migration system, to make it work better for migrants but also, more importantly, dare I say, the Australian economy and the Australian people. The strategy will enable us to get the skills our economy needs, while also halving the migration intake, which is appropriate when we don't have enough houses for the people who are here at the moment. It makes the crucial point that 'ultimately the success of our migration system relies on the backing of the Australian people'. That's why one of its key aims is to rebuild social licence by returning migration levels to normal. It will fix the visa backlog of almost a million that we inherited. It will fix the visa system abuses. It will resolve issues in international student numbers. Crucially, it also focuses on planning and implementing the program to meet the current skills shortage needs—where we need them.

This has been welcomed by companies like Transvent, which operates an air conditioning spiral duct manufacturing facility in my electorate of Moreton. When I visited Manager Shane Morris and his team recently, they told me about their considerable but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to hire locally—to the extent where they had signs out on Bradman Street trying to lure people in and ads placed all around the world. Shane indicated that the skills shortage in this area has stymied growth for a number of welding and manufacturing businesses. He said:

Skilled labour is a major issue for manufacturers these days. I know of companies now going offshore for supply or setting up their own manufacturing facilities overseas due to labour shortages in Australia.

He agrees that the skills shortage needs to be addressed urgently.

The Migration Amendment (Strengthening Sponsorship and Nomination Processes) Bill 2024 addresses the damaging skills shortage and implements the key commitments of the strategy. It amends the Migration Act 1958 to put in place a new skills in demand visa, a new approach to temporary skilled migration from December this year. You can trust a Labor government to protect workers, and that is what this bill will do. This is the land of the fair go, after all, and it's only just that those who move to Australia to work receive the same fair go.

Annual indexation of the thresholds is a requirement to protect wages and conditions for both local workers and migrant workers. We don't want our migrant workers to be vulnerable and exploited, and ensuring that migrant wages increase alongside other wages protects against that. Indexation of income thresholds was recommended as far back as 2017, when the Leader of the Opposition commissioned a review. It will come as no surprise that the former government failed to act on this recommendation. The temporary skilled migration income threshold was $53,900 on 1 July 2013 and it was exactly the same amount on 30 June 2023. Unbelievable! It's more proof that the former government wasn't interested in getting wages moving. I always remember Minister Mathias Cormann belling the coalition cat when he said low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economy.

The coalition definitely weren't interested in the efficient management of the migration system. This bill addresses the problems left to us by the coalition by implementing three streams. The first is the specialist skills pathway, designed to attract highly skilled specialist workers. The income threshold for them will be $135,000, and it's open to migrants in any occupation who earn more than that.

The second stream is called the core skills pathway. To meet the needs of Australian employers, applicants need to meet the occupations listed on the Jobs and Skills Australia list. They also need to earn more than the current skilled migration income, which has been indexed to $73,150. The bill will rename this the core skills income threshold. The occupations included on the core skills occupation list are not prioritised and there are no limits on how many occupations can be listed. There is also no limit on the number of visas that can be granted for any given occupation. The number of visas will be driven by the level of demand from employer sponsors, meaning that business need is the driving force.

The third stream, the essential skills pathway, will promote the migration of workers with essential skills. The parameters of this pathway are still under development and will be announced soon.

Another key facet of this bill is the development of a public register of sponsors. This will have the benefit of increasing transparency in the system and engendering public trust. The public register will contain a list of businesses approved by the Department of Home Affairs to sponsor migrant workers. The register will make it easier for temporary skilled migrant workers to change jobs, as they'll be able to consult the list to find a new sponsor if things aren't working out in their workplace. The register will contain information such as the business number of sponsored workers and their occupations. It will also include business location information, to make worker mobility easier and more efficient while still ensuring that workers are directed towards high-needs areas in the economy. It will give migrant workers the confidence that their employer is legitimate and therefore decrease the possibility of exploitation—something no-one would like.

The bill also implements changes to labour market testing, making it valid for six months rather than four. This will benefit businesses, who will have increased flexibility to meet the testing requirements and resolve their skills shortage needs. This bill is focused on responsibly continuing Australia's commitment to migration, our multicultural community and our worldwide connections. It will develop and maintain a more prosperous, more fair and more secure labour market in Australia. It will work for businesses by securing the workers they need when they need them and promoting business growth and prosperity. Crucially it will benefit workers by securing protections for wages and conditions through indexed salary thresholds. This bill will ensure sustainable migration levels and ensure we get the skills that are in demand to boost productivity. Labor's plan for migration sets us up for the future, and I commend this bill to the House.

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