Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to immigration.

Now we know it is more or less official: Senator Vanstone’s department is completely out of control. The disgraceful treatment of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon and now the latest and highly disturbing findings regarding the Curtin detention centre show that this minister is not up to the job. It is an out-of-control department run by an out-of-control minister. That is perhaps why the parliamentary secretary, Mr Andrew Robb, rather than the minister has been given the job of overseeing the running of detention centres.

But we must give Minister Vanstone credit for one thing, because she has managed to get one thing right. She has ensured that John Howard’s goal to drive down wages is being achieved through the 457 visa system. Last night there was another example of the way the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, is overseeing a 457 visa system that is completely in control. It is in control because it is driving down wages—in this case from $41,000 to $27,000 for those workers. It is in control because it allows unscrupulous employers to intimidate vulnerable workers, and it is in control because it fits perfectly into the Howard government’s extreme Work Choices legislation.

Instead of admitting this today, we saw the minister criticise the Labor Party’s decision to revise the TP visa at next year’s national convention. What was the Liberal Party’s reasoning for this? Border security. Let us look at a recent example of the Howard government’s history on border security. I would like to draw the Senate’s attention to a report by the Australian about 110 Chinese nationals from China and Hong Kong who entered Australia illegally over a number of years up to March 2000. They illegally obtained citizenship and passports from corrupt Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs officials by paying them up to $200,000. The minister then encouraged this immigration racket by allowing these 110 people to keep their passports and their citizenship. It took over six years for this criminal racket to be detected. That does not sound to me like the best border security.

There are different rules for different groups. One group pays people smugglers; the other group pays huge amounts of money to corrupt officials and its members get their citizenship ratified. After all this, the minister has the audacity to come into this place during question time and lecture the Labor Party on border security—a tad hypocritical, I would say. This is from a minister who says that the government’s primary role is in border security.

In the short time that I have left to me, let us have a look at these 457 visa cases. What has the minister said every time that the Labor Party has brought these cases to her in question time? ‘I’ll look into it and get back to you,’ she says. She says that about so many issues when it is clear that her department has not managed its rules and its policies properly. In the case of the holders of 457 visas, how many times so far has she got back to us? Not once.

The Howard government is successfully using its 457 visa program to drive down wages and yet hopelessly failing in the area it declares to be of primary importance: border security. Are the people who are getting their wages pushed down by all this, the skilled workers who are coming to Australia, benefiting? No. Are the workers here in Australia benefiting as the minister says? No, because their wages are getting driven down as well. Every time that one of these skilled workers is brought in and underpaid because the government is not paying enough attention to this program, it makes it harder for Australian workers to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, to work decent hours for decent remuneration. That is what the 457 visa program is all about under this government. (Time expired)