Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In summing up, I would like to thank senators for their contributions to the debate on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Worker Protection) Bill 2008. I would also like to thank those who incorporated their responses due to the tight legislative timetable. I apologise for them having to do that, but there will be a record of their contributions.

This is an important piece of legislation. It was drafted in the first instance by the previous government and was not introduced in time before the last election. It has changed, but the basic policy intents—remedying some of the deficiencies in the arrangements surrounding sponsorship and dealing with sponsors who fail to do the right thing via sanctions and inspection regimes—were issues considered by the previous government. They took a decision that they needed a legislative response, because there have been restrictions on the capacity of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to ensure the integrity of the system. My great concern as a defender of the temporary migration program is that it has been seriously undermined, and public confidence in it has been seriously undermined, by the exposure of cases of abuse of overseas workers. That represents a small number of incidents in terms of the overall program, but it is not an insignificant number. I would say to the Liberal senators who tried to suggest that the union movement’s concerns were not warranted: you are wrong—dead wrong. We have had serious problems and, as you know, the previous minister—