Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I do, thank you. I listened very closely to Minister Cash trying to explain this move to reduce the salaries of some of the most skilled—yes, highly paid—workers in Australia. So much of Minister Cash's response was an attack on unions, an attack on some of the most hard-working workers in Australia and an attack on the Labor Party. I am not interested in petty point-scoring between the government and the Labor Party. I am interested in supporting the interests of workers and unions. The pettiness is the not the interest I have at my heart; I am interested in supporting the interests of workers.

Minister Cash's justification for reducing this threshold from $250,000 to $180,000 was based on a so-called independent review that did consultation. I am sure that consultation showed there was a great diversity of opinion from the big end of town—the resource industries; the mining industries—and the unions working for the interests of their workers and supporting their conditions and salaries to make sure they have fair salaries for the work they do.

The only justification for this so-called independent panel and its recommendation is that they were not given any substantial evidence. The most substantial straight-forward evidence for why that threshold was increased from $180,000 to $250,000 is that the $250,000 ensured that the vast majority of workers would have their salaries subject to market testing. This would mean their salaries would have to be upheld and they would not have unfair competition from 457 visa holders.

The other telling point of Minister Cash's response was that the independent review of this 457 program said that having the market threshold at $250,000 was an unnecessary burden on businesses employing highly-paid workers. The government's unnecessary burden, what it often refers to as red tape—your unnecessary burden; your red tape—equates to what we see as sensible regulation, sensible controls, and sensible checks and balances to make sure that the rights of workers are maintained.

I did not hear any evidence to justify why the decision made in 2013 to increase this market threshold to $250,000 should now be reduced. In fact, if you are going to reduce it to $180,000 why stop there? Why not reduce it to $100,000 as the minister was proposing? Why not have less than that? Why not get rid of market testing altogether? The reason is that the market testing is an absolutely critical part of the 457 visa program and ensures workers are paid at the going market rate.

Keeping that market threshold at $250,000 is in the interests of workers. To reduce it to $180,000 is to inevitably reduce the salaries of these highly paid highly skilled workers. Yes, they are highly paid but they are not nearly as highly paid as the people who would benefit: the owners of those big residences, the big end of town, the resource-industry bosses and the mining industry. These bosses are being paid 10 times as much—if not more—as these highly skilled workers. The rationale for reducing it to $180,000 is not there. There is ample rationale to keep the market threshold at $250,000 and I commend the Senate to support this disallowance motion.