Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to respond to Senator Vanstone’s tirade, attacking workers, unions and me. I believe it is misguided. Senator Vanstone ought to be thanking Labor and the unions for pointing out how the 457 visa scheme was being rorted and how the Office of Workplace Services was allowing it to happen. But I suppose it is politically difficult for Senator Vanstone to attack the Office of Workplace Services and the extreme Work Choices legislation, so the next best thing was to come in here and personally attack me. The fact is that the department of workplace relations and the Office of Workplace Services were responsible for sitting on the complaints brought to them by these workers. They did absolutely nothing; there was no sign of any activity from the minister. In fact there was dead silence. Rather than gracefully conceding that intervention through parliament actually got the thing moving, Senator Vanstone has managed to score the biggest political own goal that I have ever seen her score by saying that it was not just skilled migrants who were being ripped off but 164 other restaurant workers as well. This proves the whole point to me: if the issues were not raised in parliament and the Office of Workplace Services was not embarrassed into conducting these investigations then nothing would have happened. I believe there would never have been an investigation, and I do not believe that the investigation would have been broadened to cover other restaurants as well. I thank Senator Vanstone for making this point so clearly on our behalf.

I suggest that Senator Vanstone is trying to distract us from her embarrassment and the Howard government’s embarrassment that exploitation of hospitality workers is far more widespread in restaurants—as she conceded today—than has been previously estimated. I think her disgusting personal attack on me was completely unwarranted, and I ask her to apologise. She should come down to the chamber now and do so. This government’s poor management of the 457 skilled migrant visa scheme and the incompetence of the Office of Workplace Services has been completely exposed through this. While the minister is not responsible for DEWR and the Office of Workplace Services—and I can understand her frustration with them—she is responsible for ensuring that standards for workers here under the 457 visa are maintained.

I note the government has acted in the bill before this place, where greater sanctions are applied to employers if the conditions of a visa are knowingly and recklessly breached. This is a response to the problems that were being experienced. Previously, employers doing the wrong thing under the 457 skilled migrant visa scheme could only be sanctioned by not being allowed to sponsor those migrant workers ever again. So that in itself, through the minister’s own legislation, is proof that the government knows it has a big problem here. It would not have known the extent of this problem if this issue had not been raised in parliament. So I am shocked at the sheer front of a minister who is clearly exposed and embarrassed by the extent of exploitation that I presume either the minister for industrial relations or OWS would have had to make public eventually. If they had not, we would have extracted the fact that there were 164 workers underpaid or 48 in breach of the award conditions in Senate estimates come November. Instead she has tried to shield herself and her government’s embarrassment by launching this pathetic, personal attack.

Workers do need to be brave. They do need to step forward and make complaints. They do need to join unions. But I find the hypocrisy disgusting. It is hypocritical for Senator Vanstone to suggest that unions ought to do more, when it is this government that has passed extreme industrial relations legislation designed specifically to remove the capacity of unions to go into these workplaces in the first place and to remove the awards—the minimum conditions—that these hospitality workers rely on and upon which the findings of these underpayments were based. Without these awards we would not be able to stamp out this exploitation, and that is the system of industrial relations that the Howard government stands for. It is extreme and it will deny the protections that we have been able to enforce by raising these issues in parliament and by embarrassing the government. (Time expired)