Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023, to strengthen employer compliance for temporary visa holders working in Australia. Migrants are incredibly important for our economy. According to ABS data, in the year 2019-20, 26.3 per cent of all jobs in Australia were held by migrants. That's over a quarter. That's 5.3 million jobs. Thirty per cent of those jobs were held by temporary migrants. That means temporary migrants held 1.6 million jobs. That's about 10 per cent of our labour force. Temporary migrants make an enormous contribution across Australia's industries to fill workforce shortages and do millions of jobs that Australia needs to keep our economy powering forward.

Migrants are incredibly important for our economy, and without them our economy would grind to a halt. They contribute so much to our local communities through their culture and language. They enrich what it means to be Australian. Migrants look after us, and, in turn, we must look after them. But, unfortunately, for all that migrants are doing for our economy, they are being exploited, underpaid and ill-treated in many parts of our labour force.

The bill before us today addresses the exploitation of Australia's temporary visa holders. The reality for these workers has been laid bare in numerous dire reports. The Migrant Workers Taskforce report in 2019 showed that wage theft from migrants is an issue that we haven't known very much about historically but is rife within our economy. The National Temporary Migrant Work Survey of 2017 revealed that as many as 50 per cent of temporary migrant workers may be being underpaid in their employment. That means, as a temporary migrant worker, you are as likely as not to be the victim of wage theft—one in two. The report goes on to say that the wage exploitation of temporary migrants offends our national value of fairness. It harms not only the employees involved but also the businesses which do do the right thing and are panelised by comparison to those that do not. The Grattan institute in May 2023 showed that exploitation of temporary migrants in our labour force is widespread. Up to one in six of recent migrants are paid less than the national minimum wage, compared to just nine per cent of Australian workers—that means between 27,000 and 82,000 workers across Australia. Between 6,500 and 42,000 are underpaid by at least $3 an hour. This is wage theft on a grand scale, right across our economy, impacting the most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers.

These incidences of exploitation and wage theft are rife across many Australian industries. The construction industry, the second-highest industry employer of temporary residents, at 44,300 people, was described in a 2017 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology as particularly problematic when it comes to employment standards of temporary migrants. That report highlighted a range of areas of noncompliance with employment standards, despicable practices like the confiscation of workers' passports and some cases of actual physical abuse. In the food and beverage industry the data shows the situation is not much better. This industry is the most common industry to employ temporary migrants. More than 100,000 temporary migrants work in the food, beverage and hospitality industries—12 per cent of all temporary migrant workers. Before the pandemic, recent migrants were four times as likely to work in hospitality than long-term residents, but those who worked in hospitality—an industry which particularly relies on migrant workers—were found even more likely to be underpaid than those in other industries. They are younger, they're less skilled, and they're ripe for exploitation.

There were so many examples across these and other industries of how temporary migrant workers have been exploited. The first was the simple underpayment of wages: workers being underpaid for the hours they worked, workers asked to work extra time without being paid, and workers having entitlements that they deserved not provided. The second area was unfair dismissals: without being given a reasonable justification or where there was no warrant for dismissal in the first place. The third was unpaid training. The fourth was tax avoidance by paying workers only in cash. These are practices which rob temporary workers of their rightful wages, rob Australians of taxation revenue, and create an unfair playing field where those businesses that are doing the right thing are disadvantaged.

It gets worse than that. There are incidents highlighted across these reports of migrant workers being pressured to break their visa rules, of misclassifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees, of workers having their passports withheld, and of threats to have the workers' visas cancelled. We've seen example after example of these horrific practices being perpetrated on Australia's temporary migrant workers. One of the most egregious was the case 7-Eleven. In 2020, 7-Eleven was forced to pay back $173 million to workers that their franchisees had ripped off. This was systemic underpayment of wages. In some cases workers were forced to withdraw their wages from an ATM and pay them back to their employer. That's how brazen it was—workers were forced to withdraw their wages from an ATM and pay them back to their employer. There was absolutely no regard for the law, and completely wilful ripping-off of these workers. The migrant taskforce report in 2019 determined that wage exploitation was systemic across the 7-Eleven network. It wasn't a minority of stores, it wasn't a few bad apples—the majority of 7-Eleven stores were involved in this wage exploitation. After these practices were first revealed to the public in 2015, 7-Eleven outlined a number of measures to prevent wage fraud amongst their franchisees. They made investments in technology to centrally record employee attendance, they made greater investments into enforcement and compliance through field investigations, and they created a noncompliance complaint hotline for employees. Still right throughout the economy the practices that were so rife at 7-Eleven are perpetrated across many different sectors. Another example highlighted by the Migrant Workers' Taskforce report was the case of NQ Powertrain and July 2023 reports of this labour-hire company being fined $106,000 for exploiting migrant workers at its North Queensland farm. This exploitation included unlawful deductions from workers' wages and workers being brought in on the Seasonal Worker Program but noncompliant, and these practices were happening for years. In 2021 the Levitt Robertson class action for workers on the Seasonal Worker Program revealed workers were losing up to $300 per week from their wages.

I think a lot about my electorate when I think about these cases. Parramatta is home to 113,000 people born overseas. That's over 55 per cent of the electorate's population. Parramatta is one of the most multicultural electorates in the country based on the percentage of the population born overseas. We have nine university campuses in Parramatta. People are drawn to Parramatta from all over the world to come here to study and build a life for themselves and their families. Many of those people, whether they be students or people on temporary visas, are here working in these arrangements. They are some of the most vulnerable workers in our community, people that have come to make a contribution to Australia and a contribution to themselves, but ultimately end up in exploitative workplaces. If I think about the scale of this challenge and apply it to the electorate of Parramatta, in the 2021 census 81 per cent of Parramatta's population were working either full or part time. If this data on the number of people exploited across the country were repeated across Parramatta, then one in six of those people would be exploited. That's about 5,000 people in my electorate working in exploitative conditions; 5,000 people being underpaid; 5,000 people living with the threat of a visa cancellation or passports being confiscated; 5,000 people living without the rights they deserve; or 5,000 people being forced to work overtime, not being paid for training or being forced into employer arrangements that aren't warranted based on the nature of the work they do.

That is why the bill before us today is so important. The key objectives of this bill are, firstly, to strengthen employer compliance laws, making it fairer for Australian businesses who do respect the rules and ensuring they are not undercut by scrupulous competitors; secondly, to remove barriers which discourage workers from speaking up and seeking support; and, thirdly, to implement two recommendations of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce report. Specifically, that's recommendation 19:

… that the Government consider developing legislation so that a person who knowingly unduly influences, pressures or coerces a temporary migrant worker to breach a condition of their visa is guilty of an offence.

Adding new criminal offences building on existing laws in the Migration Act to make it a crime to coerce migrant workers into breaking visa rules and to make it a crime to unduly influence, pressure or coerce unlawful migrants to work—that's the first one. The second one is recommendation 20 of the migrant workers report—that is:

… that the Government explore mechanisms to exclude employers who have been convicted by a court of underpaying temporary migrant workers from employing new temporary visa holders for a specific period.

To implement this recommendation the government is introducing a new prohibition measure. It's designed to stop prohibited employers from hiring temporary migrant workers who are not sponsored—for example, international students—it aims to stop unscrupulous businesses from reoffending and exploiting more vulnerable people and it will help even the playing field for Australian businesses who employ migrant workers but have been disadvantaged by unscrupulous competitors for too long.

When you put these measures together, they aim to stop unscrupulous employers from gutting their workers wages, to stop them from pressuring workers to break their visa rules and to stop workers from being threatened with visa cancellations. It's about making sure that our labour market is fair. It's about restoring the national value of fairness, which in this field has for too long been undermined.

This legislation goes to the core of the country that we want to be. We want to be a country that attracts people from all around the world, that is a magnet for talent, hope and ambition in the four corners of the globe, that brings people to this country in ways that we have across sequential waves of migration, that brings people to this country to build a better life for themselves and ultimately to build a better nation for everybody. But we undo that ambition and thwart that national objective if we don't treat these temporary workers with the dignity and respect they deserve, if we have one in two of those temporary workers being underpaid and one in six exploited in other ways. It is a national shame. It betrays our aspiration to be a great, multicultural nation, and that's why this legislation is so important.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is a proud migrant nation. That wonderful Indigenous leader Noel Pearson says that you cannot tell the story of Australia without telling three stories. First is the 65,000 years of continuous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture that is the foundation of our society. Then there are the Westminster institutions, the democratic norms and the rule of law that followed. Finally, there is multicultural migration that has so enriched our nation in recent decades. You can't tell the one story of Australia without telling those three stories. Indeed, today half of Australians either were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. My community is central to this success story. More than two-thirds of my constituents were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. Australia, as a result, is a prosperous, safe and cohesive country. We are the greatest multicultural success story in the world, and our migration system through the years has enabled that. In the past, when our nation has confronted crises and challenges, we've used our migration system to help us build a better country for the next generation.

Unfortunately, the previous government's neglect of immigration policy, this critical part of our national identity, this strategically crucial part of our economy, this foundation stone of our community, has created and bequeathed an immigration system to the incoming Albanese government that, as Minister O'Neil has said, 'favoured temporary migration in increasingly lower-paid jobs'—and these are the two essential ingredients of the worker exploitation that we know is occurring in Australia's workplaces. Those opposite left our migration settings on cruise control for a decade, and the system drove into a ditch.

Over the last decade, story after story has emerged about the exploitation of migrant workers in our community. I've said repeatedly in this chamber, on the other side of this place, that this was one of the great scandals of our time. It was one of the great stains on our national character. We had in recent years the infamous 7-Eleven case, where we saw intimidation and threats of deportation against staff. We saw systemic underpayment and doctoring of payroll records. Through the class action process against 7-Eleven we saw that one worker was being paid as little as 47c an hour and we saw that 7-Eleven underpaid their workers by $173 million.

We've also seen research that says 60 per cent of international students in Sydney earn less than the national minimum wage, with even more missing out on other mandatory workplace benefits, including casual loading. As in the case of 7-Eleven, these people are particularly vulnerable to coercive threats of deportation, which could means fears about losing the opportunity to complete their study despite the huge financial and emotional downpayments made by them and their families. Because of these coercive threats, we know that many workers are terrified to speak up. A Grattan Institute report from this year found:

Recent migrants are 40 per cent more likely to be underpaid than long-term residents with the same skills and experience and who work in the same job.

The Grattan Institute report found that up to one in six migrants are paid less than the minimum wage. The report also found that, while temporary visa holders made up four per cent of the workplace, they made up to 26 per cent of all litigation initiated for a breach of the Fair Work Act in the year 2021-22.

A report from Unions NSW found that over one in five workers are paid a lower salary because of their visa status or nationality, and migrant workers are also more likely to miss out on paid leave, overtime and superannuation.

This exploitation is devastating for every worker. These are hardworking people contributing to Australia's economy who, to date, have fallen through the cracks in our system. In a country which prides itself on egalitarian values, a nation built on immigrant success stories, this is a national shame. It's a disgrace. And those opposite did nothing about it for far too long.

As the Grattan Institute said earlier this year, 'If we don't take wage theft more seriously it will keep happening.' And as Professor Allan Fels, the Chair of the Migrant Workers Taskforce, said in June this year, this exploitation:

… has been a severe problem for at least 10 years, there have been huge numbers of underpaid and exploited migrant workers and nothing was done about it.

Nothing was done about it by those opposite during their time in government. This crucial area of national economic policy and national cultural policy was left on cruise control. The previous government did not act. In fact, they wilfully oversaw systemic exploitation of migrant workers across Australia. The 7-Eleven scandal, which rocked Australia, led to no action by the former government. The former government did not implement the key recommendations from the Migrant Workers Taskforce, which reported to the Morrison government in 2019. Two years after the publication of the task force's report, they did introduce a bill, but it was a bill which was never even brought forward for debate in this place, let alone for a vote.

The Migrant Workers Taskforce report was another report in a long succession that were left on the shelf by the previous government. The announcements were made, the social media posts were put out there, and they said, 'Job done!' The marketing was done but no substantive reform was delivered, and therefore the problem continued. The previous government sat on their hands, which pretty much sums up their attitude to resolving this systemic and devastating problem.

On top of doing nothing to solve the problem, those opposite preferred temporary visas to permanent ones. The effect of the migration system they presided over was actually to make it easier for crooked employers to target vulnerable migrant workers. They looked the other way. They allowed long-running abuse of some of the most structurally vulnerable people in our society to continue.

That's why we're reforming these laws. That's why this bill is before the House. We have listened to the recommendations from the 2019 Migrant Workers Taskforce final report, and through this legislation we are implementing recommendation 19 and recommendation 20 of the report. We've listened to recommendation 19, which was to strengthen our legislation so that any employer or individual who coerces workers, such as by using a worker's visa status to exploit them, is guilty of an offence. We've also listened to recommendation 20, in prohibiting employers and individuals who have been found to exploit workers from hiring workers on temporary visas. These reforms will provide strong incentives for employers to do the right thing by their workers.

After a decade of inaction, the Albanese Labor government is tackling the exploitation of migrant workers in this country, and it's not before time. The Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023 will establish new criminal and civil offences for coercing people to work in breach of their visa conditions or for using visa status to exploit workers. It will prohibit employers and individuals who have exploited migrants from hiring future workers on temporary visas. It will align and increase penalties for work related breaches. It will provide for an enforceable undertaking for work related breaches and compliance notices to employers who breach relevant Migration Act and Migration Regulations rules, and it will reform the law so that the exploitation of a worker may be considered as a potential mitigating factor when visa cancellation is under consideration. These reforms are not before time. The Grattan Institute has expressed its support for the bill:

We support the Bill's expansion of the powers of the Australian Border Force (ABF) to crack down on unscrupulous employers and prevent employers found to be taking advantage of migrant workers from hiring temporary migrants.

These aren't the only reforms that the Albanese Labor government is making to our visa and migration system—a visa and migration system which is not fit for purpose and which creates vulnerabilities for workers across our economy. Since coming to government, we've slashed the backlog of visa applications, from just under a million in the pipeline to now less than 600,000, and the citizenship backlog is now less than 80,000; that's the lowest level in six years. In the last 10 years, not one MP in this House could do a street stall in the Australian community without somebody coming up begging for action on visa processing times—people who would jump through all of the hoops required to receive the Holy Grail that is Australian citizenship and were stuck in a bureaucratic purgatory. People in my community started to draw inferences about the conduct of the previous government. There are large parts of my community that believe those opposite didn't want visa, PR and citizenship applications to be processed, because they didn't think it was in their political interests, thinking those people would hold Labor values. That is something that was raised with me regularly in the electorate. The incompetence of those opposite—their lack of prioritisation for creating new Australians—is inexplicable without that explanation, in my view.

Anybody who is worth their salt in this place will have spent a lot of time in Australian citizenship ceremonies. They're one of the best parts of the job. Looking someone in the eye who has just received Australian citizenship, seeing how important it is to them—you can't get through a citizenship ceremony in this country without someone being in tears. Seeing how important it is to these people, I think the failure to process citizenship applications was one of the great scandals of the previous government. It was just indefensible. We've gotten to work on fixing it, and the citizenship backlog is now less than 80,000—the lowest it's been in six years.

We've also established a pathway to Australian citizenship for New Zealanders in this country. It's a crucial thing in communities like mine with big Kiwi Pasifika communities. These are people who lived in a state of limbo in our society, mates from across the ditch, equal in all ways except for their status in Australia. It's particularly harsh on the children of those families. It was a foolish decision by the Howard government, the consequences of which grew over time, and this Labor government is fixing it. We're dealing with the problem.

We've also commissioned a review of the Australia's migration system, led by former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr Martin Parkinson. That review described the migration system as broken. As I said earlier, this was a system that was on cruise control for the better part of a decade, and it ran into a ditch. It became more and more complex and less and less adequately funded, and it became less and less fit for purpose. We need a migration system that serves our nation by delivering the skills that Australian businesses need and the nation-building that our country was built on. Since this review was released, in April, the Albanese Labor government has been consulting widely on the development of a migration strategy, which will be released later this year. It will deliver a new approach to skilled migration, helping to drive productivity growth and wage growth while ensuring migration is better managed and integrated with the levers that make migration successful.

The reforms to the Migration Act in this bill will ensure that migrant workers are treated respectfully and honourably and are paid what they rightly deserve. I would just emphasise to the House, in my capacity as the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, that the world watches how we treat migrants in our country. We're not a country of guest workers. We're a country where workers should be treated equally and fairly in the workplace. It's what our country was built on. When I am overseas, I am commonly asked by international peers about how members of their diaspora are treated in Australia, about their status in our community, about their status in our educational institutions, about their status in our workplaces. We need to be able to look our international peers in the eye and say that in Australia everyone is treated equally, everyone is treated fairly, there is no underclass, there is no guest work, there is no vulnerable exploited class in our society. The exploitation of migrant workers enabled by the previous government hurt Australia's reputation internationally.

Equally, these reforms will be closely observed. They will be important for our relationships across the Indo-Pacific—relationships with countries who send their students to our universities, relationships with countries who send their young people to our country on working holidays. They will be able to look to Australia and know that their students, their children, their young people will be protected from exploitation. They will be able to work here and study here free from coercion and free from exploitation. That's why these reforms are so important.

As Minister Giles has said, this bill recognises that when people vulnerable to exploitation are mistreated, we all suffer. It recognises the contribution being made by so many workers and the importance of addressing the corrosive nature of expectation in workplaces across the country. Worker exploitation hurts everyone and only benefits wrongdoers. It's up to government to stamp it out, and that's what this bill is about. I commend the bill to the House.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Everyone deserves to feel safe and be treated with respect at work. It's a basic principle. It's a right we all deserve no matter who we are or where we come from. Being able to speak up at work without fear is also essential. If you aren't being paid correctly—for example, a correct wage—or if you're experiencing unfair working conditions, you've got to have the right to speak up and make that be known. Having protections in place to support people speaking out is critical. It enables accountability and fairness.

Unfortunately some of the most vulnerable members of our community have struggled to feel safe at work. That's just an unfortunate fact of the past decade in particular. Many are exploited by employers who feel it is acceptable to take advantage of those, for example, on temporary work visas. We're talking about a significant group of people in Australia on temporary work visas. Last year 137,090 temporary work visas were granted, adding to the estimated number of more than 1.6 million temporary migrants already living in Australia. Many of them are underpaid, harassed, bullied and unsafe at work. Unsafe conditions impact this group disproportionately. Whilst we hear their stories, many people don't know how to report incidents. They experience language barriers, for example, or are afraid to lose their job or their visa, and they sadly continue to be exploited as incidents are very under-reported.

The issue is significant. Whilst people on temporary work visas only make up four per cent of their workforce, and 2021-22, the same group of people made up 26 per cent of all litigation initiated for breaching the Fair Work Act—and, as I said, most of the incidents are unreported, so that is a stark statistic. The Grattan Institute report titled Short-changed also outlined just how bad the situation is. They found that as many as one in six migrant workers in Australia is paid less than the national minimum wage. That same group of migrant workers is also more likely to miss out on superannuation, overtime and paid leave. Many also face unsafe workplaces and sexual harassment. Recent migrants are also 40 per cent more likely to be underpaid compared to long-term residents who have the same skills and experience and who work in the same job.

This exploitation not only hurts the individual and those around them but also ultimately drives down wages and worsens conditions in the workplace for all Australians. Unfortunately many people choose not to speak out on the mistreatment they experience due to fears that their visa will be cancelled or they will lose their pathway to permanent residency. I will give one example; a fellow by the name of Amir Bagheri-gol-roud-badi. He's an Iranian refugee on a temporary work visas. Amir is his 50s and has worked pretty hard within the construction and building industry. Amir told my office that he worked for his employer for an entire year—in a very physically demanding role, as you can imagine in construction—yet was not paid his wages at all. He was underpaid completely. It is absolutely shocking the way that he was exploited. His employer refused to pay him the wages that he was entitled to. They told him, 'You can complain if you want,' and warned him that no-one would listen to him, given he was a refugee on a temporary visa.

Amir was also exposed to unsafe working conditions. In fact, given that there were very limited safety measures in place, he actually experienced a permanent work injury. He was too scared to speak out in case his visa would be cancelled or he would be deported. By the time he found the courage to speak out, it was too late. Amir hadn't sought the relevant documentation or evidence to support his case, so he was told he had no options to fight this, all because he was too scared to speak out and make a complaint earlier. The current system failed to protect Amir. He was too scared. The Albanese Labor government is committed to addressing this type of exploitation and many other forms of exploitation.

These reforms are just one way that the Albanese government plans to protect workers. As part of these reforms, we'll directly implement key recommendations made by Professor Allan Fels in the Migrant Workers Taskforce report. This includes new criminal offences for using a person's migration status to exploit them in the workplace—recommendation 19 from the task force. There's also a new tool to stop employers engaged in exploitative practices being able to hire workers on temporary visas for a period of time—recommendation 20 from the task force. This bill also goes further, and provides high penalties for those who do the wrong thing. The government will also repeal the part of the Migration Act that makes it a criminal penalty for workers to breach their visa conditions, which has effectively criminalised speaking up. We want to encourage workers to speak up and report exploitation, and we'll do this by putting in appropriate protections from visa cancellations when this happens.

The government has also provided $50 million to the Australian Border Force as part of the 2023-24 budget to be used over four years. The ABF targeted employers who were suspected of wrongdoing. These reforms will give the ABF new compliance tools. As part of this work, the Albanese government is working with industry, union and civil society through a co-design process to help design further safeguards within the visa system. Put simply, the government is committed to making it safer for people to speak up when they are being exploited in the workplace.

There is a lot of detail in this bill from paragraph 245AA of the Migration Act. There will be new criminal and civil offences being introduced in cases where people are coerced to work in breach of their visa conditions or are using their visa status to exploit workers. That penalty will be up to two years in prison or 360 penalty units. It will be important to deter employers and prevent the exploitation of workers due to their visa conditions. At the moment, there are no ways to prevent employers who have been sanctioned under the Migration Act from hiring international students or backpackers, despite the vulnerability these workers face.

In paragraph 245AYA of the Migration Act there will be new prohibition notices that will enable the minister or a delegate to declare employers and individuals as being prohibited from hiring workers on temporary visas for a period of time. The triggers for such prohibitions will include court orders and noncompliance with employment and migration law. The government wants to ensure that the employment law and migration law work collaboratively and towards the same goals. When this situation occurs, the minister must publish relevant details on the department website. Ultimately, these changes mean that employers will not be able to hire any temporary visa holders where they have exploited workers in the past.

There will be stricter enforcement of breaches for those involved in wrongdoing, and penalties for work based breaches will align with the maximum available penalty under the Migration Act. Also under the Migration Act there will be work related offences and provisions made subject to enforceable undertakings, providing the Australian Border Force with additional tools to help them in their enforcement efforts. There will be a notice that formally advises an employer who breaches relevant Migration Act and migration regulation rules and provide the ABF with more tools to assist in their enforcement of that. Under section 116(1A) of the Migration Act, exploiting a worker can be considered as a potential mitigating factor when visa cancellation is under consideration. This will help encourage migrants on temporary visas to speak up if they're being exploited. It puts protections in place and sends a message that their visa will not be cancelled in these cases.

Over the past 10 years our migration system in this country has relied on a large number of low-paid, exploited temporary migrant workers. We know they've been routinely exploited; the evidence is there for all of us to see. Over the past 10 years the former government, the coalition government, did nothing about this. It's I think a familiar pattern to all of us: they did absolutely nothing about this.

The former coalition government also failed to implement the key recommendations of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce. That task force reported to the Morrison government back in 2019, but it was never actioned. That's not a surprise. The former government became aware of the atrocious exploitation of temporary workers particularly through the 7-Eleven case in 2016, a situation that saw workers paid as little as $10 an hour, with franchise owners commonly paying workers for half their hours and forcing staff to hand back much of their pay in cash. Many of these individuals were international students. This situation led to 7-Eleven franchise employees being paid $173 million in underpaid wages, interest and superannuation to compensate them. The former government found out about this but did not feel compelled to take action. Instead, they preferred temporary visas to permanent visas, making it easier for employers to exploit vulnerable members of our community.

This is the crux of this. The Morrison government did a big smoke-and-mirrors play. The former prime minister went on about how he was going to do congestion busting in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, but particularly Sydney and Melbourne. He said, 'I'm going to reduce the migration numbers.' He reduced permanent skilled migration by about 10,000, and he upped temporary work visas. It was all smoke and mirrors. And I think it's very important to note for the House that while temporary work visas are an important part of the migration system—there are gaps in various industries and sectors that need to be filled—they cannot be the only way that people come in on work visas. It goes against the whole set-up whereby, particularly in the post World War II period, Australia's migration system and Australia benefited, frankly, from having millions of people migrating to this country to settle here permanently on skilled visas and to work here and become Australians—like my parents who came here and worked hard and became Australians. They settled here and built a life and built a home, for themselves and for their children and their grandchildren. That's what we want to see more of, because it's that connection to Australia and becoming Australian.

So, as I said, while there is a place for temporary work visas, they can't be the replacement for that skilled and permanent migration that has built this country into what it is today. That's exactly what the previous government did. They played a game by increasing the number of temporary work visas. They knew exploitation was happening. They did nothing about it. Then they claimed they were reducing congestion—and bashed migrants at the same time. It's deeply cynical, deeply 'do nothing'—typical of the previous Morrison government.

We know we have to protect temporary visa holders. We got a glimpse of labour shortages in the absence of temporary visa holders during the pandemic. As I said, we understand the value of temporary migrant workers and the rich contribution they make to our economy. But we have to make sure we protect these workers, that the protections are in place, because it is the right thing to do. I also acknowledge that without these protections the exploitation of these temporary workers will ultimately discourage this type of migration and lead us to experience more long-term net loss in economic terms.

The Albanese government is putting a stop to this exploitation. That is what this bill is about. Members opposite can huff and puff, roll their eyes and do all sorts of things, but they know the truth of this. They know we are taking steps to ensure that no-one who comes to Australia is exploited or abused. You cannot deny that principle; you cannot deny that objective. We're taking the relevant steps to ensure that people like Amir no longer fear speaking out when they are clearly being exploited—not being paid the wages that they earn—or are experiencing unsafe working conditions. These are basic principles for workers and for Australians. We're making these changes because people in this country deserve to be paid fairly and treated respectfully. That's what this bill is about. Exploiting workers is never okay. It's never acceptable. It doesn't matter what that person's migration status is. Whether they are an Australian, a permanent resident or on a temporary work visa, it is not acceptable. That's the standard we should be setting as a nation. This government is committed to protecting all the workers in Australia.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise proudly to speak on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Bill 2023. I joined the Labor party because of my passion for protecting workers' rights. It's something we in Labor have done since before Federation. It's something we will always do. It is the very foundation that our party is built on, and it's everything that we do and focus on. Since we've been in government, we've been responsible for a significant suite of reforms in the industrial relations space. Let's not forget that this is an area that had been neglected for almost 10 years while those opposite were in government. It was nearly10 years when employers could run amok and focus on their profits rather than their people. It was 10 years when the most vulnerable in our society could be exploited due to the lack of empathy and care that was shown to them by the then government.

It wasn't just robodebt or the attacks on services; it was the lack of action in workplace relations that hurt Australians. People coming to our country were left unprotected and vulnerable too. As Professor Allan Fels, chair of the Migrant Workers Taskforce said: 'This exploitation has been a severe problem for 10 years. There have been huge numbers of underpaid and exploited migrant workers and nothing was done about it.' COVID hasn't been around for 10 years. Those opposite can't use that excuse any longer.

This was even after the national debate that occurred following the 7-Eleven scandal. The former government sat around and did nothing. Who's surprised? We'd all got used to that because it was the former government's response anytime it got tough. They ignored, and didn't implement, the key recommendations of the task force report. They knew of the crisis gripping our country, yet they wiped their hands clean of their responsibilities. Now that I think about it, it's how the Liberal Party always handle tough situations. Remember how the former Prime Minister, the member for Cook—the sook from Cook—handled national challenges like the Black Summer bushfires? He wiped his hands clean of the problem while sipping pina coladas on the beach at Waikiki.

The former coalition government's inaction even extended to individual cases in their own electorates. Take Freedom Foods in Shepparton, for example, who were accused of underpaying their workers by 25 per cent in 2019. That was pre COVID. These workers were made to perform tasks not covered by the skilled workers scheme as well as being severely underpaid. The company also discouraged workers from talking to the union about their working conditions, saying that, if they talked to the union, they were getting on a plane. This is the sort of rhetoric that is both degrading to the worker and also utterly illegal. But it's the sort of rhetoric that was allowed to run rampant under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison mess. The complaint about Freedom Foods dated back years before the 2019 report, with the former Nationals federal MP apparently being told about it in 2016. What did he do? He did the same as always: nothing. This is just a further indictment of the former government's inaction on protecting all workers in this nation.

In primary school, we teach our kids to step in when someone is picking on someone else and to stand up and speak out for the person being bullied. Typically, the coalition are bystanders. They knew what was happening. They could see it happening, yet they chose to do nothing about it. Even primary school kids could tell the other lot that not stepping up and just being a bystander makes you as bad as the perpetrator. Migrant workers were left in the deep end, with the government happy to watch them drown. I'm proud to stand here today and say that this will happen no longer.

The Grattan report shows that one in six recent migrants are paid less than the minimum wage. This government sees the exploitation that migrant workers experience under the current system, and that's why we are committed to addressing it. We know that underpaying one worker isn't devastating just for them; rather, it affects the entire workforce. Also from the Grattan report 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 are working the same job. Allowing the underpayment of migrant workers isn't just a migrant worker issue; it has ramifications across the entire workforce. It drives down the wages of Australian workers—but that's what the other side like.

The mistreatment of one group has devastating consequences on the entire workforce, and Australian workers will often suffer worse working conditions along with their migrant counterparts. By lifting up the most vulnerable, we lift up everyone. We are doing this by implementing the key recommendations from Professor Allan Fels's Migrant Workers' Taskforce report. There are new criminal offences for using a person's migration status to exploit them in the workplace. This is recommendation 19: there is a new tool to prohibit employers engaged in exploitive practices to be able to hire workers on temporary visas for a period. This is recommendation 20: to further deter those who seek to exploit the system and their employees, we are increasing penalties to make sure that those who do the wrong thing experience consequences for their actions.

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 the litigation initiated for breaching the Fair Work Act. However, we know that tackling this problem through the industrial relations portfolio won't achieve the full outcome, which is why we take a holistic approach and give the Australian Border Force new compliance tools. These new tools given to the ABF are supported by the Grattan Institute, which says:

We support the Bill's expansion of the powers of the Australian Border Force (ABF) to crack down on unscrupulous employers and prevent employers found to be taking advantage of migrant workers from hiring temporary migrants.

To make sure workers are empowered to stand up and advocate for themselves, we're repealing the parts of the Migration Act that has a criminal penalty for workers who breach their visa conditions. With these parts of the act removed, the government will encourage workers to speak out and report exploitation by putting in place appropriate protections for visa cancellation. The government will also raise awareness of employer obligations and substantively engage with businesses to ensure they understand their responsibilities and are equipped to do the right thing.

The bill does this by working in six parts. The first part of the bill focuses on new criminal employer sanctions. These increased penalties will be up to two years in prison or 360 penalty units. The second part will be focused on making sure employers or individuals who have been prohibited from hiring overseas workers due to breaches are unable to hire in the future. If an employer shows they cannot maintain the standard work practice, they should not be put in a position where they can exploit workers further. The third part of the bill aligns and increases penalties for work related breaches. This is aligning the current breaches to the ones within the Migration Act, seeing them increase from 60 penalty units to 240 penalty units. The fourth part of the bill is to make sure that there are enforceable undertakings for work related breaches. This part of the bill uses the Fair Work Ombudsman system to provide enforceable undertakings. The fifth part is the use of compliance notices to inform workplaces of workplace breaches. This will help promote compliance, like what is done under the Fair Work Act. The sixth part of the bill tackles other smaller amendments to the Migration Act, that, if a worker is having their visa cancelled, the worker can provide evidence of worker exploitation that could be a potential mitigating factor in the case.

This is something that has been very near and dear to me. I worked in a shoe factory and watched migrant exploitation happen. This is what drove me to get to this place, to make sure people are treated fairly, to make sure they are getting the proper workplace health and safety training they need and to make sure they're not exploited because of their lack of English language or knowledge of workplace laws. This is something we should be doing more and more. We should be making sure that people who are vulnerable are protected. Usually, it's those people who are considered unskilled—although, I'd challenge 98 per cent of us to do some of the work they do, and I think we'd all fail. It's also about ensuring that people on the lowest incomes get the support they need and deserve to do their jobs properly and efficiently.

Migrants are not just stats to be played with; they're actually people—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers—but they're also people who come here for a better life and who deserve a better life. They deserve a better life by making sure that their workplaces are safe and by making sure that unscrupulous employers are taken out of the system. We need to make sure that we do the right thing for every Australian who goes to work. Everyone who goes to work deserves a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. It also means they're entitled to a safe workplace, free from harassment, exploitation and abuse. This is something that the Albanese government does. The Albanese government stands up for workers and ensures they get the support they need when they go to work.

Debate adjourned.