Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are a migrant nation. More than half of our population growth since 2005 has come from migration. High levels of immigration, especially skilled migration, helped sustain Australia's 28 years of uninterrupted economic growth. We wouldn't have the Snowy Hydro or even the Opera House without migration. Migrants have come here to contribute to our country and have made their homes and lives here. But there is a big difference between an economy and a nation built on a properly managed permanent migration scheme and one that is dependent on piecemeal temporary migration. If we are not careful this powerful, unifying, uplifting national idea will soon be nostalgia rather than reality.

Under this Liberal government we are changing from a nation built by permanent migrants to an economy built on temporary migrants. This government has used temporary migration to undercut the value of the permanent scheme. Before Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison—in fact, for nearly 70 years—our immigration department actually managed the selection, arrival and settlement of migrants and refugees in Australia. As James Button wrote in 2018, we had a model of managed migration. The department arranged English classes and access to health care and welfare. It helped people to find housing, skills and jobs, to learn how to become a good citizen. What do we have now? We have permanent migration capped at 160,000 a year as a so-called congestion-busting measure. At the same time, temporary migration is soaring to historically high levels.

Under Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, the government couldn't care less about how migrants cope when they arrive on our shores. It's either too expensive or too hard to figure out. Instead of investing properly in permanent migration, which brought us economic and social success, the government has lazily lapsed into a dependence on temporary migration. Where has that landed us? For one thing, we have created an economic underclass of people with no stake or say in our country's future. These are people who have faced appalling conditions but who don't have the right to vote out the very government that created the conditions for their exploitation. Instead of a managed process we have the government turning its back while workers are sent to dodgy labour hire companies and businesses. That's the beginning and end of the migration process and any chance that migrants have of a viable, secure, economic future in our country. These workers are forced to accept pay as low as $4 an hour, often physical or sexual assault, extortionate costs for food and accommodation, and curtailed movement through the withholding of their passports. All this has come up in report after report, as Senator Ciccone highlighted before. All this does is undermine the hard-won conditions and pay of every other worker in this country, as well as the work of the good employers, because the good employers—the ones who do the right thing by paying the right wages and ensuring the right conditions for their workers—are now at a competitive disadvantage.

The ongoing wage theft inquiry has received several submissions that include stories of this system's true impact on the lives of these workers. These submissions reveal that the very insecurity of temporary migration and this government's reliance on it has created the conditions for rampant migrant worker exploitation. Nowhere is it more evident than in the way that temporary visa status is used as a tool by unscrupulous employers across a variety of sectors in the economy to abuse, coerce and denigrate migrant workers. They are forced to accept exploitative, unsafe and illegal conditions and remuneration only because employers can exploit their insecure status.

What is worse is that the government knew about this exploitation long before the current debate. In 2014 we had the Independent Review into the Integrity of the Subclass 457 Program. It was chaired by John Azarias, with a panel of eminently qualified experts. What did they tell us? They told us that a lack of monitoring and sanctions for employers who exploit temporary migrant workers was leading to the whole system being undermined. I commend the Azarias report to all of you who have an interest in the subject.

Then there was the report of the government's own Migrant Workers Taskforce, chaired by Professor Allan Fels and Dr David Cousins—a report that correctly described in horrific detail the state of abuse of migrant workers. Again, this government has made it clear that the report is not a priority. It is being glacially slow to act on the report's very sensible recommendations.

Workers should and will continue to come to Australia in search of an economic future, but this government is completely mismanaging that process at the expense of these workers and our economy. Companies that exploit labour decide who comes to this country. Instead of the economic security, pay and conditions and workplace rights that have embodied an Australian dream that is so attractive to migrants, the government has created conditions for abuse and exploitation. Temporary migration workers are in turn being used by this government to undercut the wages and conditions that in the first place make our country such a great place to work and live in. Australian companies, companies in this country, exploiting migrant workers should not be making decisions on who comes to this country. It should be the government, this parliament and the people of this country.