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

Anyone who has read this report would be amazed to find that there are so many weaknesses in what this government is proposing. It is not about the skilled migration program; it's about how to unskill Australians and it's about how to exploit those workers brought in from overseas. There are several deeply disappointing aspects to this document. The recommendations the government members have made are quite simply outrageous. They say they are streamlining—or, more accurately, trashing—labour market testing. They want to make it easier for employers to bypass the current requirement to look for local workers. More employers will go straight to temporary visa workers instead. And the government also wants to reserve quarantine spots and flights for temporary migrants. How many more ways can you whack the Australian community?

This government have no idea what they're doing—on second thoughts, they do: they want to suppress wages. They've very successfully done that. Over the past eight years under this government wages have never been lower, and now we see stagnant wages. This is the first government that has actually caused a decline in the middle class in this country. Being a care worker was a middle-class job. Being a cleaner was a middle-class job. Being a transport worker was a middle-class job. This government has turned around and ripped the heart out of those jobs that brought the middle class into this country.

For the family members of 40,000 Australian citizens who are still stuck overseas and desperate to come home, the government's decision to reserve quarantine flights for temporary migrants is absolutely heartbreaking. In the past 12 months our immigration system has come to a total pause. This year, the first year since 1946, more people left Australia than entered it. This government has delivered the worst vaccine rollout. There has been an abject failure to invest in quarantine facilities. It's no wonder we're looking at limited immigration for months to come, because the government has spent eight, going into nine, long years underspending on education and training. Our nation's workforce is facing a disastrous shortage of skills. At this government's feet, young Australians, older Australians, all Australians are second class in their own country.

We all know that immigration is incredibly important for this country. Immigrants provide our country with drive and imagination, and a rich multicultural society. In the past, migrant labourers on projects like the Snowy Hydro scheme were given a path to permanent residency and citizenship. The government used to support apprenticeships and TAFEs. Employers would provide on-the-job training. All that has changed. Now what the government is proposing is not to put any money into training. It's cheaper to bring in people from overseas to come and do this work, not to skill Australians and give opportunity to future generations—let alone the reskilling of Australia that we need with the challenges with the future of work. TAFE funding is going down, not up. According to the Independent Education Union, TAFE funding is now lower than it was a decade ago. Seventy per cent of courses have had funding cuts. Instead, our skill gaps are filled with endless temporary workers with few or little rights. Very few of these people ultimately have the opportunity to become permanent residents.

If the coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it has shown us the utter failure of the system this government has put into place. According to the OECD, Australia is now home to the second largest temporary migrant population in the developed world, right behind the United States of America. We're No. 2. In the hospitality industry, around one in five chefs, one in four cooks and one in five waiters hold temporary visas. We aren't training people for the future. We aren't training hardworking Australians for an opportunity to be in our important industries. Of course, our fourth largest export is international education. But it should be a national embarrassment that we can educate the world while facing skill shortages in our own backyard.

This budget's current reliance on temporary visa workers is bad for everybody. It's bad for those visa holders who are dependent on an employer to keep their job, who can get exploited by unscrupulous operators preying on their vulnerability. A study this year by Unions NSW showed that over 80 per cent of Sydney's international students were illegally and shamefully underpaid. This is an unacceptable level of exploitation right here in Australia. It puts unfair pressure on other employers who try to do the right thing, and it locks out Australians who want to be employed in a fairly paid job.

Many visa holders come to this country because they want to become Australians. Our system provides far too few opportunities to become permanent Australians or citizens. But, most of all, this strategy, this policy and this government is bad for wages. It's bad for a wages-based enterprise bargaining system. How, as a visa holder, do you enter into bargaining negotiations with your employer? How do two million temporary worker visa holders in this country turn around and bargain under the enterprise bargaining system? The government's answer to that was: 'It will make it easier. We'll give them even less rights.' They can't exercise even the rights they've got now without retribution and potentially being deported at the employers' whim. And, of course, we've seen this in the aged-care sector, where the government has been suggesting, consistently now for a number of months, that aged-care workers should be workers that are on temporary visas. They have the hide to sit here and tell us what they're doing for the Australian community in the skill areas and in aged care, yet they're not making those jobs the middle-class jobs they should be—jobs that have middle-class responsibilities but not middle-class wages. This government is directly responsible for that strategy because of the policies they put in place in regard to temporary visas and because they have a clear responsibility about making sure that decent wages are delivered in an area they substantially fund. There are no procurement requirements, no responsibility, no training, and the answer is, 'Let's bring somebody in we can exploit.' It's that simple.

Currently these workers are exploited ruthlessly by bad operators. They undercut those employers who are trying to do the right thing, as I said. It's an outrageous situation. What the government is saying now is not that they will decide who comes into this country but that employers will decide who comes into this country—employers that exploit, rip off and won't employ Australians. And, not only will they do that and allow them to do it, they are actually making it cheaper for them to do it. That's a government working against this community and Australia's future in work and skills.

There's a role for temporary visas of course, and there's a genuine visa shortage in certain skills. The skills are rare and hard to find, and that needs to be considered. But there have been a number of important reports, which this government has also put in place. John Azarias wrote a recent report, the National Agricultural Workforce Strategy in March this year, and previous reports by the same author and various panels under this government called for the opportunity to employ and engage more Australians and to have an appropriate system that actually has balances and checks. I'm one of those silly people; I remember when all the chefs were trained here as apprentices. But, when it's cheaper to do it overseas, I don't blame the employers for doing that, because you've made the opportunity for them to do it. But I do blame those employers that exploit, and you allow them to do it and you encourage it by your policy. There are those decent employers who stand up for hardworking Australians by giving them jobs and opportunities and fair wages.

In April, the Guardian reported a story about a German woman named Nina, who took it for granted that she would work for three months for as little as $35 for a full day's work just to fulfil her visa requirements. She knew that she was being ripped off, but she had no choice but to carry on. Of course it's not just in the hospitality industry; the same thing is happening in the meat industry in the abattoirs, where a lot of the jobs that were good, well-paid, local jobs for hardworking Australians are now being given to short-term temporary visa holders who, again, have no say and no real rights because they are temporary and they can be easily disposed of by the employer—that's why they're employed. It's quite clear that we are stuck with this policy of this government, which doesn't have any real vision—only a plan for how to demolish skilled Australia.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.