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

We have done a lot of consultation because we want to get it right. They say to me that the former government never talked to them like we do about the detail of these things. I am constantly talking to industry about it. We have to get the balance right. We want to be clear, though, that we want 457 workers to be more expensive than Australian workers, because we do not want people to employ overseas workers in preference to Australian workers—a principle that the previous government used to articulate as well. One of the major requirements out of the Deegan report is about market rates of pay. We have the situation now where some overseas workers coming into the country are paid less than their Australian counterpart—that is, there is an incentive to use a foreign worker over a local worker. I do not think anyone in here would endorse that. The market rates argument is very important and will be central to any reforms.

I also want to pick up another point that Senator Trood made, although I do not want to go on for too long. The discussion paper deliberately raised the gamut of issues, including education costs because these are actually starting to impact on state education systems. In Queensland—your own state, Senator Trood—we suddenly had an influx of a large number of workers who then had kids who went into the public schools, which did not have the facilities to cope. Most of the rural communities are very glad to have them, because a lot of those towns are dying. They are very welcoming and there have been some really great stories about all of that.

At our primary school, which my youngest son has now left, they have now got 40 overseas students who do not speak English. But they have got no ESL teacher. The teachers are finding that the resources to cope with those students are not there. The P&C association has recently paid for the six-month employment of an ESL teacher because the teachers have been finding that they have not been able to give enough attention to the other students—a real problem that comes as a result of having overseas workers. It is not irrelevant; it is a cost to the taxpayer and a cost to the state education system—costs that have got to be considered. Personally, I am not going to look to lumber employers with those costs. We cannot pretend that we are not going to have a public policy debate about those because there is not an issue. There is, and state governments are raising it with me because the larger the number of overseas workers the bigger the drain on their resources.