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

I always put it in context, if you look at my speeches. I appreciate the opposition’s support on the bill, but the legislative impetus for this came from the previous minister because of his concerns. If you look at what he did in areas like the IT and meat industries, you see that he responded—in a fairly ham-fisted way, in my view—to concerns that he had about the exploitation of workers in those industries. This is not something that is unique to me as minister.

There have been serious issues of abuse. They are in the sorts of areas where you see industrial relations problems. The industries where there have been problems are the industries where you have problems with exploitation more generally. We have had examples, like the exploitation of cooks in the restaurant industry in Canberra, which have had to be dealt with. There are concerns. My consistent position has been that you can only defend the scheme if you make sure it has integrity. You can only allow it to work for employers who do need the skills if you ensure its integrity. This is about making sure we have the balance right in that regard, and it will give us the ability to ensure that it does have that integrity and that we can weed out the small numbers of sponsors who fail to do the right thing.

Regarding the question of consultations, unlike under the previous minister, who announced changes without any consultation—major changes in this area and major changes, more broadly, in the migration area—this consultation has been exhaustive. It started with me appointing an employer reference group, which has three representatives of industry, led by Mr Coates, whom Senator Trood may well know and who is senior executive and chairman of Xstrata. They looked at the 457 system and how we might make it more responsive to employers’ needs. On receiving that report, I implemented all but two of their recommendations. One which I did not implement was changing the name of the program, but I would like to do that at some stage. I think the program has seen a vast improvement in its responsiveness to employers and the processing of applications. If you talk to employers using the scheme, you will find that they are very complimentary about the changes and what those have meant for allowing them to access the scheme.

That was one point of consultation. The second was that I appointed the industrial relations expert Mrs Barbara Deegan to conduct an integrity review of the program, and she has spoken to hundreds of people throughout Australia and consulted with all the key groups. I released her report a matter of weeks ago. We also had a discussion paper that went to possible reforms that would be part of the regulations for this legislation. Again it was public, and again it received submissions—more than 80 were received. All of that is to be considered as part of the drafting of these regulations by the Skilled Migration Consultative Panel I established, which includes four members of senior industry bodies like ACCI, AiG and the Minerals Council, four union representatives and four representatives of the largest state governments. All are engaged in the process of getting the issues and integrity of the 457s right.

Senator Trood made a good point which is the key to all this: the scheme grew very quickly, and the public policy settings around it have been inadequate to cope with the growth not because of the numbers but because of what has happened in terms of the skill classifications and countries of origin. Under the scheme originally, we were bringing in highly trained medical professionals, engineers et cetera—people with obvious qualifications going into high-paid jobs sponsored by large companies. There were no problems with that. From an immigration point of view, I just want to know that they have a passport, a visa and no criminal history. Whether they get $250,000 or $300,000 from BHP every year is their lookout.

But with the expansion of the program we have seen the skill level come down so that we have a lot of people coming in at tradesman level. We have also seen the source country change. Source country change is important because we have people who do not have English as a first language, some of whom have very little English at all. That is where the exploitation occurred. People from China, the Philippines and India, lacking the English-language skills, have been brought in by labour hire firms into industries with sometimes poor IR records, and that is where the problems have been.