Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise today to oppose this urgency motion on international student visas put forward by One Nation. At the outset, I have to say it seems to me that this is another attempt by the One Nation party to grab a cheap headline at the expense of the truth, playing on elements of racism and a version of the 'other', of someone who is different to me, through a motion which expressly goes to the issue of international students. This motion is an absolute contradiction, because it's not that long ago in this place that One Nation, along with a few of the other crossbenchers, supported the government's ABCC legislation. That legislation prohibits unions from negotiating to limit the number and use of overseas workers with building companies who tender for government contracts. I don't know how they missed that, but they clearly did. The One Nation party, with the government, expressly put in place a limit on a union's ability to limit in an enterprise agreement the number of overseas workers in a company engaged in government tendering. What a contradiction. They also went to limit rostered days off, limit the ordinary hours of overtime and so on and so forth. But the standout feature is we have this so-called urgency motion today on international students and yet we have a party that absolutely voted with the government to say to trade unions: when you're negotiating with building companies who tender with the government, you will be restricted in outlawing overseas workers. That's exactly what One Nation did.

The other surprising feature for me about this urgency motion is that Senator Georgiou like myself and, indeed, like you, Acting Deputy President Reynolds, is a Western Australian. We know in Western Australia we have, I think, three One Nation upper house members in the state parliament. So I can only assume that Senator Georgiou didn't talk to them; otherwise, they would have been able to tell him that the McGowan government has, indeed, put forward a very bold plan in partnership with the universities in Western Australia to make Perth a destination for international students to bolster our economy because, as Senator Birmingham pointed out, international students add to our economy. So once again we have this contradiction between what the One Nation senators in this place think and perhaps what their colleagues in the Western Australian state parliament think.

We also know that international students are not the problem with our job market. Twenty hours a week is what they work, as Senator Birmingham explained to the parliament. But we know that what's happening in our economy right at the moment is it's not the international students; it's the low wages growth. Low wages growth is now starting to have a real impact on our economy because, obviously, when families and individuals don't have decent wage growth—in the private sector it's been as low as 1.8 per cent; the lowest it's been in at least two decades—that impacts spending power, it impacts the way that households are able to meet their expenses and it also impacts on employment. So this furphy around international students is nothing but a cheap headline, another attempt by One Nation not backed up with any kind of facts or figures, trying to scapegoat international students, when, as I said at the outset, One Nation, by voting with the government, sought to restrict our unions' ability to limit the use of overseas workers in their enterprise agreements.

And who could forget the words of the Reserve Bank Governor, Philip Lowe, a couple of months ago, when he called on workers to demand higher pay rises? He said workers need to demand higher pay rises amid a wage growth crisis. When you look at all of those who analyse our labour markets, no-one of any competence is talking about international students; they are talking about low wages. We've seen the disgraceful way the government has failed to acknowledge its own public service and give public servants a decent wage rise. From the day that Mr Abbott was elected Prime Minister, there has been a war on our public servants. Very few of our public servants have had wage rises, and that policy has continued under Mr Turnbull. So we've seen very low or no wage growth in the public sector. We've seen an absolute stalling of wages in the private sector to the tune that analysts and the Reserve Bank governor—hardly a friend of workers—have started saying it's time that workers demanded a wage rise. That's the issue in our economy. It has nothing to do with picking on and scapegoating international students, many of whom have come here from near neighbours who are also often scapegoated by the One Nation party. They had obviously not bothered to talk to their colleagues in the WA parliament, because they would have certainly told them that we are very, very clear and committed to making Perth a destination for international students. Perhaps Senator Georgiou doesn't know this because he's a fairly new senator, but, nevertheless, he's a Western Australian senator and he gets a lot of staff, so he could have done the background work on this. Perth was the No. 1 destination for international students. We've lost that status, and we want to get it back, because we do appreciate that international students make our economy stronger. They bring a lot of wealth. They pay rent, they buy services and they sometimes work—they're limited in their ability to work to 20 hours—and that's the sort of growth that we want to see in Western Australia.

The government hasn't always done the right thing by international students. We've seen the appalling rip-off at 7-Eleven. I presided over a visa inquiry when I was the chair of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee and, quite frankly, I was shocked by the level of exploitation of those students that I saw. They were working for minimal wages and they were being forced to pay back wages. Instead of trying to, wrongly, demonise international students, One Nation and the government should be making sure that we never, ever again see the exploitation that we saw of these guests in our country. Most of them are here for a short time. They come in and take advantage of our good education facilities, and yet, at the same time, they get treated in a way that none of us would stand for as workers in this country. No-one is convinced we have seen the end of that rip-off at 7-Eleven. It's probably still going on. In fact, I think it's definitely still going on, as I speak. We know most of those workers in the 7-Eleven stores are international students who are often forced to work more than 20 hours, forced to work for free and forced to pay back wages. They don't get their proper entitlements and they have never seen a penalty rate and so on.

If you want further proof, we also know that in the Western Australian state election this year One Nation gave its preferences to the Liberal Party that wants to reduce wages, that doesn't stand for penalty rates and that has presided over critically high unemployment in Western Australia. That's the party that One Nation chose to support in the recent state election: a party that doesn't support a minimum wage and that thinks workers can be ripped off on the weekends and not get penalty rates. I don't know where this concocted notion about international students comes from; it's completely wrong. One Nation should have taken a better look at the bills it supported in the past were it specifically outlawed overseas workers. This should be dismissed. It's nothing but a headline grabber.