Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Migration Amendment (Employer Sanctions) Bill 2006 provides, as has been outlined before, for sanctions against employers, labour suppliers and others who knowingly or recklessly employ illegal workers or refer them for work. As such, the main provisions of this bill are to be supported. We have a long tradition in this country of ensuring that people who are not entitled to work here due to their visa conditions do not work. The Commonwealth is well aware that each illegal worker in this country is at risk of exploitation. The Commonwealth revenues are at risk and our fellow Australians are denied the opportunity to work.

Although we hear a lot about how we are nearly at full employment in our economy, the reality is that about five per cent of people are unemployed and many more are vastly underemployed, considering the fact that, for government statistics these days, you have to work for only one hour a week to be considered to be employed. We must, therefore, have a system that prevents people who are not eligible to work from doing so.

There are a number of reasons why we must improve the system we currently have in place. And, as even Senator Ian Macdonald has said, this amendment bill is a step in the right direction. This bill contains eight new fault based criminal offences relating not only to employing illegal workers but also to referring noncitizens for work. This is a vital step in policing this problem as many people now are employed in a labour hire situation, and now the organisation that refers the applicant is also to be liable.

It is also true that now in the Australian labour market there are many non-traditional work relationships. Taxi driving is a case in point. Often the owner of the taxi leases the cab to the driver. In the past those engaging illegal noncitizens in such situations would not have been able to be prosecuted as this relationship was not defined under the law. Now, however, if you knowingly allow a noncitizen to work, you are liable. The new offences are to be: allowing an unlawful non-citizen to work—and this is to be considered an aggravated offence if the illegal worker is being exploited; allowing a noncitizen to work in breach of a visa condition—again, this is to be considered an aggravated offence if the illegal worker is being exploited; referring an unlawful noncitizen for work—again, an aggravated offence if the illegal worker being referred is exploited; and referring a noncitizen for work in breach of a visa condition. An aggravated offence will be committed if the prospective illegal worker will be exploited.

Unfortunately, those employers and referral agencies that employ noncitizens are likely to be the very same people who exploit the workers. There is no more specific example of this than in the sex industry. In the many cases that have been reported over the years it is obvious that the people engaged in the sex industry come into this country illegally, are treated in the most disgusting way by their employers, and are reluctant in any case to approach authorities, even if they have the language skills to do so.

It is clear that employing illegal noncitizens for any kind of work is just the starting point, however. By the very nature of these so-called employment relationships the door is always open to exploitation. Whether it is through underpayment, unsafe work practices or, in extreme cases, slavery, any person who is prepared to employ illegal noncitizens is exploiting those individuals. Tougher sanctions are required to ensure not only the integrity of the Australian labour market but also the basic human rights of individuals concerned.

However, like many others in this debate I would like to turn to another area of immigration practice in this country, its application and the ramifications for the integrity of our Australian labour market. I am glad Senator Ian Macdonald raised the issue of the Australian meat industry, because I recently investigated the situation of people working in abattoirs in Western Australia. I did this because I was informed by the Meat Workers Union in my home state that there were several hundred unemployed or underemployed members of their union.

When the situation was investigated I found that there were five abattoirs in Western Australia employing people who were classified as noncitizens but were holding 457 visas. On the surface, that did not seem too bad. However, when I found out that those five abattoirs were employing 356 people in total, I thought there was a serious problem. I was told that the union knew of hundreds of qualified skilled workers who were not able to secure employment. And at the same time the immigration department had granted 356 people 457 visas to work in Western Australia. Well, I for one fail to understand how a situation can arise where hundreds of qualified meat workers are unable to secure positions in the industry that they have worked in for some time, yet the immigration department can allow 356 people in from overseas to do that work.

My examination of the relevant immigration forms and policies did not find any reference to the need to determine whether suitable citizens or permanent residents are available in the Australian labour market before a 457 visa is granted. The only reference I could find was on form 1110—the business sponsorship monitoring form—that says:

Accept as good practice the desirability of creating appropriate career opportunities for Australian citizens and permanent residents ...

The next point reads:

Accept that the recruitment of labour ... must not counter Australian Government training policies and objectives of producing a highly skilled and flexible Australian workforce.

So there is no checking being undertaken to see whether there are suitable Australian citizens or permanent residents who are available to do the work, as is evidenced by the meatworkers having hundreds of unemployed or underemployed members. And the notion that employers accept that the recruitment of foreign labour does not counter government training policies is an absolute nonsense—after all, what government training policies? This is just a form of words on paper which do not mean a thing.

The objective of producing a highly skilled and flexible Australian workforce in this day and age of Work Choices simply means a race to the bottom in terms of pay and conditions. There is something very wrong with an immigration system and government policies that allow employers to source foreign labour on the basis of a skill shortage when there are hundreds of Australian meatworkers who cannot secure work in their industry. All their skills and experience count for nothing it seems. Instead, the government has created a system that allows employers to source foreign labour and do our fellow citizens out of work.

We need look no further than the cafe and restaurant businesses around the nation’s capital to see the excesses of the 457 visa system. And I am sure my colleague Senator Lundy will have plenty to say on that matter. Cooks and chefs are sourced from overseas—working for rates of pay and with conditions that no decent Australian employer would offer—and then when they have the temerity to complain they are treated as less than human. The 457 system is completely out of kilter with normal employment practices and the need to overcome short-term skill shortages in our labour market. Instead, it is being used by some employers, in conjunction with Work Choices, in a race to the bottom in pay and conditions.

I am also aware, thanks to my colleagues at the AMWU, of boilermakers being recruited in South Africa who were promised work on projects in the north-west of Western Australia. They were promised good Australian pay and conditions and were loaned money to get to Australia—paying interest rates of over 18 per cent on those loans in the expectation of being able to discharge the loan quickly because of the high wages they would receive and then being able to send money back to their families in South Africa—only to be cruelly misinformed. When they arrived they did not work on projects in the north-west at all. No, they were put to work in metal fabrication shops in the suburbs of Perth. There were no big wages and no decent conditions. After living expenses, usually provided and billed by the employer, and the cost of their loans were taken into account, they were not able to send any money at all back to their families in South Africa. Chalk up yet another failing of the 457 visa system.

The facts are simple: those employers who wish to exploit the 457 visa for the simple reason of reducing their labour costs are able to do so. If you want to act in this manner then the only conditions you have to meet are that you accept that it is ‘desirable’ to create career opportunities for Australian citizens. Of course, you can do that. If an Australian citizen wants to work for you, they can do so on the same basis as you employ foreign workers—after all, it is only required that the employer accepts that it is desirable, not that they actually have to do anything about it. And you must ensure you do not counter government training policies. That, as I have said before, is a joke. If there are no government training policies to counter then you do not have to do much of anything at all.

The system is condemning to unemployment Australian citizens who want to work in an industry but who are not prepared to do so at the reduced pay and conditions, while the Commonwealth government, through the policies and practices of its immigration department, accepts with open arms foreign workers to do work that could be done by Australians. It is time that the balance in this visa class changed. It is time to ensure that no further 457 visas are granted unless there is a demonstrated shortage of labour.

Whilst I hear from those opposite—and in fact we have heard very often from the minister—that the slightest thought of questioning the 457 visa category is deemed to have a hint of the White Australia policy about it, and whilst people therefore seek to cast anyone who questions this policy as racist, I challenge those opposite to name a country in the world where it is not the policy of their government that the local labour market gets first preference. The only country that I can find that has that policy at the moment is this country, through the 457 visa system.

From my attempts to research this issue, I cannot find any state based information on the numbers or classifications of those coming in on 457 visas. This issue has been pursued at estimates, and from answers to questions on notice we may get that information. However, as a general rule of thumb with things happening in Western Australia, whenever it comes to population based allocation of funding or the like, it is deemed that Western Australia gets about 10 per cent of the total. I therefore presume that in the last year in Western Australia some 8,000 or more 457 visas have been issued to people working in our state. However, we have no real idea of where they work, what amounts of money they are paid, what conditions they work under and the like. Whenever employers wanting to sponsor 457 visa holders in the country seek a variation to the employment conditions of workers employed under state conditions, they must consult the state government. So far, less than 400 of those applications have been made.

While considering employment conditions in the meat industry, I learnt of one particularly stark example of how 457 visas, and in fact immigrants to this country, can be exploited. There is an abattoir down near the town of Albany called Fletchers. It is an abattoir surrounded by razor wire and CCTV, an abattoir that employed a lot of Afghan TPV holders—people who had obviously gone through an enormous amount of trauma to settle in Australia and had chosen Australia as a place that they would be safe. These people were housed in sea container type accommodation and kept behind the razor wire with the CCTV on them the whole time they were employed. It is little wonder, then, that as soon as they were legally able to they all left the employer, and Fletchers are now seeking to bring in some Filipino workers.

This is at a time when we have some regional unemployment, when we have meat workers in Western Australia who are unemployed or underemployed. These people of Afghan origin did not say they did not want to live in regional Australia or Western Australia, but they sought to flee from that employer as soon as they were legally able to. Those are the kinds of conditions that employers are seeking to exploit at the moment. Hopefully this piece of legislation will seek to redress some of those issues, but we are a long way behind in the fight. As I say, the current 457 visa system is open at the moment to the worst kind of rorting. If you have a problem with your labour force, don’t worry about it: you can go to the immigration department, it would seem, source your labour from overseas countries—which always have their own labour as their first priority—and then engage in a race to the bottom with your competitors.

The skills shortage that is often alluded to by this government as the reason that we have to have this special visa category is actually one of the government’s very own making. This government has had 10 long years to do something about the impending skills shortage, and yet it did nothing. Australian industry failed to train enough apprentices to replace skilled workers leaving the workforce and yet they too did nothing. As has been discussed in this place often before, skills shortages do not spring fully formed from nowhere overnight. This is a skills shortage that has been 10 years in the making.

There are leading indicators—and, in fact, a whole department of the Commonwealth: the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations—to ensure that forward planning in skills training and skills development takes place. Unfortunately for Australians seeking long-term careers, it would seem that that department has been so busy implementing the Job Network in its various guises, new workplace agreements and now Work Choices that it obviously dropped the ball on identifying skills shortages.

This government, even in their latest budget in May this year, have failed to deliver any kind of measures to address the skills shortage crisis that the Australian economy faces. Instead, their only solution is that we have a 457 visa system to overcome the problem. There is no long-term solution or vision from this government. Instead, we have a 457 visa system that does not address the needs of Australians with the necessary skills or experience who could do the work but who are cut out of the system because an employer can source foreign labour instead. Employers can source foreign labour quickly and without effort thanks to the system of visas that clearly does not take into account unemployment or underemployment of Australians.

It is all well and good for the government to debate this bill today aimed at introducing sanctions against employers who employ illegal foreign workers. However, this government need to get serious about the five per cent of our workforce who are unemployed or underemployed and nowadays do not even get a chance at work because the 457 visa is operating at full speed. Prime Minister Howard was in fact correct when he said that he would determine who came to this country and the circumstances in which they came. Clearly, if you are coming to work for an employer under a 457 visa, there are no checks undertaken to see whether an Australian can actually do the work. This is a system that must be changed.