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

My question is to Senator Vanstone, the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Is the minister aware of concerns about the operation of the 457 visa scheme in the IT industry? Is it the case that in June 2004 there were 5,000 foreign nationals working in the Australian IT industry—including 2,200 people younger than 30 years old with little or no prior work experience? Is it not also the case that around 2,000 locally trained IT graduates could not find full-time work in the industry? Isn’t this exactly what Dr Peter McDonald, who is the co-author of the ANU research which was released yesterday, meant when he said that we should consider the consequences of a policy of recruiting people on 457 visas at the same time as Australian graduates cannot get jobs? Or is it that the 457 visa program is so out of control that the minister is quite happy for employers to use these visas to hire cheaper, lower skilled temporary migrant workers instead of locally trained young Australian graduates?