Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to be part of a political party, the Labor Party, which recognises and values the contribution that migrants make to Australia. We are a party that has stood strongly for multiculturalism and stood strongly against racism. Australia is the most successful multicultural nation on the planet. Half of us were either born overseas ourselves or have a parent born overseas. We can be so proud of the role that migration has played in our past and can be sure of the important role it will play in our future. It is a vital building block of our society, and the public agree. Eighty-five per cent of Australians believe multiculturalism has been good for Australia, so, like the vast majority of Australians, I am incredibly proud of our country and the strength that we have in our diversity.

I have spent my working life representing some of Australia's lowest paid migrant workers in sectors like cleaning, hospitality and agriculture. I visited migrants in their workplaces. I visited them at their homes. I've stood with them when they've spoken out about the rampant exploitation that they've experienced in these industries. I've listened to them talk about their hopes and dreams for a better life in this country.

I've heard that the hopes and dreams of migrant workers today are the very same hopes and dreams of all Australians, be they First Nation Australians, fourth- or fifth-generation Australians or Australians who've migrated from all over the world in the decades since World War II. Those hopes and dreams are: a good, secure job; to be able to settle down and have a family, a community; to be safe, secure and supported; and to make a contribution back to the society that welcomed you.

Australia's shift from permanent to temporary migration without adequate protections for migrant workers and without adequate paths to permanence has put those basic fundamental hopes and dreams on hold for so many migrants to this country. Our temporary migration program invites people here, not to build a life but just to contribute their labour. Our temporary migration program cannot be said to be delivering that most basic hope of generations of migrants to this country—a good, secure job. In so many cases, temporary migrants are suffering the most from the absolute shame that is the widespread endemic wage theft in our country. International students in the cleaning industry are so often forced into sham contracts well below the Australian minimum wage. Backpackers and students working on farms and in hospitality are facing extreme rip-offs. Wages on farms are as low as just a few dollars an hour. Sexual harassment, coercion and assault have all been reported widely. In hospitality, I've seen wages as low as $12 an hour for migrant workers. It is also workers on temporary skilled visas who are ripped off in the most extraordinary and brutal ways. Earlier this year, I met three women who came here on skilled migration visas who were locked in a house in Canberra and forced to work in a massage parlour. Their families back home in the Philippines were threatened with violence if they spoke out, and eventually they had the courage to do just that.

Our temporary migration program invites people here not to settle down and have a family or a community but to work harder and harder to get by, to put up with the often unlawful wages and working conditions, the lack of respect and, in so many cases, the outright exploitation. Our temporary migration program invites people here not to be safe and secure but to be afraid. Too often, temporary migrants are afraid to speak out because they fear being fired. They fear being reported to Immigration and they fear not being able to survive in this country, away from home, without the job that they have. At the first sign of crisis, this government has said to hundreds of thousands of temporary migrants, 'It's time for you to just go home; we won't support you here.'

What is extraordinary is that, despite all of this, every single temporary migrant worker that I've ever met wants to make a contribution back to this country. They work hard, they pay their taxes and they want to be respected for their contribution. To be clear, it is not the fault of the temporary migrant workers who come to this country that they are treated like this. It is our responsibility, as the host nation, to make sure that migrant workers are treated with the respect that they deserve. It is up to employers to stop the exploitation of temporary migrant workers. Indeed, it is up to all of us to make sure that employers are treating them fairly, with dignity and in line with the rules.

It's not just the temporary migrant workers who lose out from this exploitation, because an attack on these workers is an attack on the rights of every worker in this country. We are and we remain the most successful multicultural society in the world, and our success has been built on the invitation to build a life here, to be able to work and be respected, to lay down roots, to have family and community, and to be safe and secure. Right now, our temporary migration program fails too many migrants who just want what we all want here—a secure future.