Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to immigration.

Now we know it is more or less official: Senator Vanstone’s department is completely out of control. The disgraceful treatment of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon and now the latest and highly disturbing findings regarding the Curtin detention centre show that this minister is not up to the job. It is an out-of-control department run by an out-of-control minister. That is perhaps why the parliamentary secretary, Mr Andrew Robb, rather than the minister has been given the job of overseeing the running of detention centres.

But we must give Minister Vanstone credit for one thing, because she has managed to get one thing right. She has ensured that John Howard’s goal to drive down wages is being achieved through the 457 visa system. Last night there was another example of the way the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, is overseeing a 457 visa system that is completely in control. It is in control because it is driving down wages—in this case from $41,000 to $27,000 for those workers. It is in control because it allows unscrupulous employers to intimidate vulnerable workers, and it is in control because it fits perfectly into the Howard government’s extreme Work Choices legislation.

Instead of admitting this today, we saw the minister criticise the Labor Party’s decision to revise the TP visa at next year’s national convention. What was the Liberal Party’s reasoning for this? Border security. Let us look at a recent example of the Howard government’s history on border security. I would like to draw the Senate’s attention to a report by the Australian about 110 Chinese nationals from China and Hong Kong who entered Australia illegally over a number of years up to March 2000. They illegally obtained citizenship and passports from corrupt Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs officials by paying them up to $200,000. The minister then encouraged this immigration racket by allowing these 110 people to keep their passports and their citizenship. It took over six years for this criminal racket to be detected. That does not sound to me like the best border security.

There are different rules for different groups. One group pays people smugglers; the other group pays huge amounts of money to corrupt officials and its members get their citizenship ratified. After all this, the minister has the audacity to come into this place during question time and lecture the Labor Party on border security—a tad hypocritical, I would say. This is from a minister who says that the government’s primary role is in border security.

In the short time that I have left to me, let us have a look at these 457 visa cases. What has the minister said every time that the Labor Party has brought these cases to her in question time? ‘I’ll look into it and get back to you,’ she says. She says that about so many issues when it is clear that her department has not managed its rules and its policies properly. In the case of the holders of 457 visas, how many times so far has she got back to us? Not once.

The Howard government is successfully using its 457 visa program to drive down wages and yet hopelessly failing in the area it declares to be of primary importance: border security. Are the people who are getting their wages pushed down by all this, the skilled workers who are coming to Australia, benefiting? No. Are the workers here in Australia benefiting as the minister says? No, because their wages are getting driven down as well. Every time that one of these skilled workers is brought in and underpaid because the government is not paying enough attention to this program, it makes it harder for Australian workers to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, to work decent hours for decent remuneration. That is what the 457 visa program is all about under this government. (Time expired)

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That rather contemptible speech by Senator Hurley shows how low the Labor Party has gone in this debate about 457 visas. And it is of a piece—as we heard from Senator Vanstone in her answer to Senator Johnston’s question—with the disgusting and dishonest remarks that were made at a doorstop interview this morning by Mr Tony Burke, the Labor Party’s shadow minister for immigration. Remember that Thursday two days hence is the fifth anniversary of the tragedy of SIEVX. On 19 October 2001, a refugee boat sank in international waters south of Java. It contained 397 passengers, of whom 352 were drowned, many of them children. It was one of the saddest episodes in this part of the world in recent history. This is what Mr Tony Burke had to say about it at a doorstop interview this morning: ‘The problem for me with temporary protection visas … is that in terms of having an impact on people-smuggling it actually works the opposite way.’

Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rubbish.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Ferguson, and I will come to you in a moment. Mr Burke continued: ‘Once it was introduced, more boats came—the boat that we remember being sunk five years ago this week, filled with 146 children—for one simple reason: the reason there were so many children there was that overwhelmingly they had dads in Australia who were not allowed to sponsor their infant children to join them.’ Wrong, wrong, wrong! Senator Ferguson, who sat with me on the Senate Select Committee into a Certain Maritime Incident in 2002, which exhaustively canvassed the circumstances of the sinking of SIEVX, well knows that each of those propositions is absolutely false.

As the minister pointed out in her answer to Senator Johnston, there was not a skerrick of evidence given to that committee, nor has it ever been asserted, that the overwhelming majority of the children who drowned as a result of the SIEVX tragedy were seeking to join their parents in Australia. That callous, ignorant and untruthful statement by Mr Tony Burke just goes to show how free the Australian Labor Party are with the truth and how they have even been prepared to sink so low as to play fast and loose with the truth about a personal tragedy.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is absolutely wrong.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What Tony Burke said, as you interjected, Senator Ferguson, was absolutely wrong. It is also absolutely wrong, as Mr Burke and now Senator Hurley have suggested, that the 457 visa policy has in fact encouraged unlawful boat arrivals. The truth is the opposite. Since the Howard government adopted in the second half of 2001 the border protection policy administered by the joint task force of ADF personnel known as Operation Relex, what we saw—as Senator Ferguson knows better than anybody else in this chamber—was the sudden surge in unlawful boat arrivals abate. After December 2001, at the end of a six-month period during which there had been approximately a dozen attempted illegal entries into Australian waters by these people at great personal peril, there were none—not one.

Every one of the people who sought to make the Australian shoreline in those suspected illegal entry vessels put themselves and their children in the peril which, tragically, those who embarked on SIEVX suffered. The boats were run by people smugglers. They were leaky fishing boats that were filled beyond capacity and they sailed through choppy seas. They were always a danger to their occupants. The tragedy of SIEVX was bound to happen as long as the people smugglers got the encouragement to believe that they could make it to Australia. What SIEVX tells us is how timely and necessary the Australian government’s policy was. (Time expired)

Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak to Senator Hurley’s motion, which refers to answers given to questions asked of Senator Vanstone this afternoon in question time. Senator Vanstone made reference to the government’s system of temporary work visas known as 457 visas. What we have seen over the last couple of days, particularly in a story that emerged yesterday, is yet another example of foreign workers, in this case workers from the Philippines, being exploited by Australian companies. I am sure that most people are familiar with the program that appeared last night, but what has happened in this case is that three Filipino workers on 457 visas have been sacked for joining a union and another five have been threatened with the same fate by the company which employs them.

The Filipino workers that I refer to are welders and were brought to Australia by a Brisbane company which promised to pay them more than $40,000 per annum, but as a consequence of various deductions being taken from their pay this has now been reduced to just $27,000. It was quite disturbing to see on the program last evening that accommodation payments that were being deducted from their salary amounted to $175 per week for each of the workers. All eight of them were living in the same house and all were paying $175 a week for the privilege of such accommodation. I also understand that there were deductions made from their wages in order to pay for their transport from their home to their workplace. This, of course, also contributed to the reduction in their salary.

What emerges from this example is a pattern that we are seeing time and time again with the misuse of these 457 visas. I have spoken before in this place about the way that 457 visas are being abused and the urgent need for a full-ranging inquiry into the use of 457 visas. What we can see, and this is a very good example, is that 457 visas are being used simply to drive wages down—to drive them down deliberately and drive them down rapidly.

Of course, it is the case that foreign workers are especially vulnerable to exploitation because their employer effectively acts as their migration agent. The agents have what the workers perceive to be the power to remove them from the country if they do not do as they are told. It has emerged that this was the case with these Filipino workers: they were threatened that they would be removed from the country if they did not work more quickly.

This also has to be seen in the recent context of the new workplace relations laws—‘Work Choices’, as the legislation is apparently called—and the impact of this new legislation in conjunction with these 457 visas. What has emerged is that now, when employees attempt to negotiate with their employer, not only will they miss out on the job if they refuse to sign the AWA that is presented to them but they will also miss out on a visa—in this case a 457 visa, which entitles these workers to stay in our country and to work.

Of course, these are people who are the least likely to report any abuses because they believe that their employer has not only the right to dismiss them but also the right to deport them if they make complaints. These people are incredibly vulnerable workers and for the visa holder to be exploited in the manner that is occurring is absolutely wrong, and similarly it is wrong to see the knock-on effect to the Australian workforce as a whole. It is imperative that there be an inquiry into 457 visas, and I am pleased to say that the Joint Standing Committee on Migration is looking very carefully at conducting an inquiry into 457 visas in the near future. I think it is very important that that occur.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Vanstone during question time today. In doing so, I thank the Labor Party for raising these issues about 457 visas because there is no other opportunity for someone like myself to stand up and say that, if this were ‘football foul-ups’, the Labor Party would star in every single edition for kicking an own goal. For me to stand here and talk about the responsibilities and the need for this country to bring in skilled migrants to fill jobs is an opportunity to remind the Labor Party and the people of Australia that we have the lowest unemployment this country has seen in over 30 years. At 4.8 per cent unemployment, everyone in this country who wants a job can get a job. We are unashamedly a business- and employment-friendly government seeking to allow people to work and to ensure that businesses can thrive and prosper. A key part of a business thriving and prospering is being able to employ staff.

If you cannot get staff to come and work with you because of the economic conditions—and I remind you that we are talking about the most prosperous economy that we have seen—then this government has found a solution. Every time the Labor Party raise the issue of foreign workers, they are demonstrating their clear xenophobia, because they do not talk about overseas workers that are coming out here from the UK or the US. They are constantly referring to Filipino workers or Chinese workers. There is always some Asian implication to it. I say that is raising some very base instincts that I find quite reprehensible.

But let us just talk about this. Skilled workers operate in many industries: in the steel industry, where there are welders, as Senator Kirk just mentioned, the meat industry and also the health care industry. These are critical industries to the prosperity of this country. That is where skilled workers are coming in. They are bringing their spouses and their spouses are also supporting this economy. They are bringing their children in and that is fantastic for this country. We are having a range of people coming here, helping our prosperity and doing the right thing.

But what I find interesting is how the opposition in this chamber are diametrically at odds with their state Labor governments, because around the country the largest users of 457 visas under the skilled migration program are the Labor states and territories. South Australia, a state with critical skill shortages, has more than quadrupled its state sponsored skilled migration intake. It has done that in a range of areas, such as regional communities like Murray Bridge, where T&R Pastoral have brought in a number of workers to work in their meatworks. They are doing it in other areas, such as rural areas, for medical and health reasons. Skilled migrants provide desperately needed relief in areas of labour shortage. They aid in the expansion of our economy and they complement employment opportunities for Australians. But do not take my word alone for it. In 1998, even Mr Beazley said:

Far from taking a job from other Australians, a migrant finding a job in Australia, as we all know, creates jobs elsewhere in the economy ...

The 457 visa is critically important to ensuring that this country can function and facilitate continued economic prosperity. Certainly it is going to be another 15 to 20 years before the next generation of Australians—their parents having been encouraged by things like the baby bonus and Mr Costello saying, ‘Go forth, prosper and multiply’—come on stream to be able to fill a range of jobs. But in the meantime we have the opportunity for new migrants to come to this country to fill jobs that desperately need to be filled, to ensure there is an ongoing prosperity and to allow Australia to lead the world in a multiracial, harmonious and positive society.

Question agreed to.