Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2016-17 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2016-17 appropriate an additional $2.2 billion this financial year. That is in addition to the amounts appropriated in the annual supply and appropriation act last year. Labor will not block supply. We are good like that. Sustainable budget repair, though, is a significant challenge for this parliament, and I say at the outset that we are prepared to work with those opposite to support the bills we can, to temper the worst excesses of the bills we cannot negotiate workable compromises on and to oppose firmly those which pick on the poor and the vulnerable.

Serious structural reform of the government's budget is required because the government's budget is now in worse shape than it was three years ago when there was a supposed budget emergency. You might remember that. They have tripled the deficit. Net debt has risen by over $100 billion since the 2013 election. We could spend the entire week talking about the ridiculous cuts and critiquing the government's budget measures. Suffice to say that when you look at the zombie budget measures, such as the cuts to poor welfare recipients, the cuts to Medicare and the cuts to school funding, and contrast them with the ongoing desire to give away a tax cut to big business and to cut the top marginal tax rate—I think for every $1 million you earn you get a $16,000 tax cut—it is pretty clear where the government's priorities lie. Serious structural reform, which would address the threats to the AAA credit rating, could be dealt with through adopting Labor's negative-gearing capital gains tax policies and abandoning the $50 billion tax cuts.

Nevertheless, I want to turn to other matters. Nine months or so in as a new member of this House, taking stock and reflecting on the various agencies and portfolios of government, I would have to say an early contender for the worst performing department and minister would have to be the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and its minister. I do not say that lightly, of course, because there is a lot of competition. I am forming that view based on what I see in my electorate, what comes in the door every day, what I have seen already in my work as deputy chair of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, and it is also apparent when you see the complete failure of this minister in relation to the core services of the department and the policy failure on the overall migration program. It is fair to say the core administrative functions of this department are failing. Citizenships delays, I have spoken about at length in this chamber and the other place, and endless audit reports from the Auditor-General outline the failings in procurement and service delivery. The latest gambit of the department—I think this is the minister and his secretary plotting the Department of Homeland Security—where they are proposing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers' money on a new headquarters. That went down well with the Public Works Committee, where I think even the government chair, Scottie Buchholz—I cannot remember which seat he is for, you will excuse me—

An honourable member: Seat of Wright.

Seat of Wright, excellent, got it. Where even he said the secretary of the department was an uncooperative witness. Every budget, we see fees go up for immigration, fees go up for visas yet the service standards go down. We now have, on the policy front, over one million people in Australia on temporary visas—working holiday-makers, international students, 457s and regional visas—with various forms of work rights. There is no reliable longitudinal data. There are endless accounts of exploitation which are not addressed, and the impact on the Australian labour market is not considered in a cumulative fashion—that is a topic for another day.

I want to turn the focus of my remarks to a very serious matter and that relates to the administration by the department of 457 visas and the sustained pattern of rorts, the refusal to reform the practices that we are seeing by the minister, and the department continuing to issue visas. The hypocrisy of the government in turning a blind eye to what is going on in the 457 racket at the moment makes them actively complicit. I quote from a letter from the minister, and this outlines at the outset the stated policy aim of the 457 program:

The policy intent of the subclass 457 visa program is that Australians have priority and that overseas workers are a supplement to, and not a substitute for, Australian workers.

That is what the minister says. In fact, anyone in Australia who writes him a letter gets this little gem of a standard paragraph back. It seems clear; who could argue?

I will also say at the outset, as someone who used to run various aspects of migration as a public servant, that I believe we will always need some capacity for temporary skilled labour, whether that is due to capacity constraints or skill gaps in the Australian economy, and that there is a legitimate need for legitimate businesses to procure these skills in a globalised world. The numbers should scale up and down according to the economy, but the key thing is that the system has to be administered with integrity and fairness to the Australians who may be missing out on work, whether they are unemployed or underemployed, and fairness to those who come in on visas who are then open to incredible exploitation which this government does nothing to address—7-Eleven, anyone?

We have heard numerous reports of labour market testing laws being ineffective or gamed. I picked this up doorknocking thousands of houses through the campaign, particularly from IT workers. But I want to raise a specific matter of current concern relating to residents in my electorate. These are serious allegations and concerns relating to the use 457s for shipping engineers. Shipping engineers are one of the hundreds and hundreds of occupations on what is called the CSOL, the Consolidated Skilled Occupation List. That is the list that you have to have an occupation on if you are to be eligible to apply, or nominate someone, for a 457 work visa. Shipping engineers, though, have a special status in that if you read the legislation they are one of only two professions, engineers and nurses, which are protected from exemptions from labour market testing by the act. The minister, no matter how much he hates it, cannot exempt shipping engineers from labour market testing requirements. They are a highly skilled and specialist occupation. There are at least 250 unemployed shipping engineers in Australia—I know this because the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers, AIMPE, have shown me this data and many of these people live in my electorate. So I am deeply concerned to hear of current issues in relation to the company CSL and its recruitment activities. These issues have been raised directly in March in the last two weeks with DIBP and the minister but with no satisfactory response. The facts are that in January, CSL advertised a range of jobs including for shipping engineers. The jobs—positions for seafarers—were advertised again for one week on seek.com on 8 March, closing on 15 March. I am aware of at least 61 applicants, because I have seen the list, who are prima facie qualified—some, again, from my electorate. I am now in possession of correspondence from the AIMPE to the minister and to CSL, which was settled by a QC on 15 and 16 March, that raises concerns that CSL may choose to fill the positions using 457 visa holders rather than Australian citizens or permanent residents.

AIMPE are raising these concerns because they are worried for Australians as this has happened before in this industry. In fact, AIMPE advised the minister that Inco Ships, now CSL, did not adequately comply with labour market testing as required under the Migration Act. In December 2015 they provided employment to foreign engineers who had previously been engaged to work on CSL owned ships, and these 457 visas were granted by the minister. AIMPE believes that none of the Australian applicants were even interviewed, let alone employed—and I would be very happy to be corrected on that front.

The act requires the minister, before issuing 457 visas, to be satisfied that no Australian citizen or permanent resident is qualified, experienced and available to fill the vacancy. What we see here is a single ad for seven days on seek.com. I do not believe that is adequate. Nevertheless, we could live in hope that these 61 applicants—there were at least 61—will receive fair consideration. But, given their concerns, AIMPE sent the list of applicants to the department. Mysteriously, one applicant was told by email on 21 March by the Chandler Macleod recruitment firm in relation to their application in January that, 'The position has been withdrawn.' Yet on 23 March CSL replied to AIMPE's letter saying they had a large number of applications for the jobs advertised in March. They are undertaking to assess applications, yet claim they have no obligation to interview every applicant—or, indeed, any applicants—and they refused to provide any undertakings requested by AIMPE to not hire more 457 workers.

I call on the minister to make a clear commitment to actually back fairness in this system, to back Australian workers who are qualified for these jobs and to not keep saying one thing and doing another. Minister, say you will not issue more 457 visas for shipping engineers, at least without being properly satisfied that serious labour market testing has occurred and fair consideration has been given. DIBP, the minister's department, replied to this email on 20 March, acknowledging the list of applicants for the jobs advertised on seek.com and saying they would 'consider this new information in consultation with the minister's office.' We await their response, and we seek the minister's assurance.

More broadly, the question that arises, of course, is why shipping engineers are still on the consolidated skills shortage list. It is clear that there are many qualified unemployed or underemployed shipping engineers in Australia, and this was admitted by the government's department in Senate estimates just a few weeks ago by the department of transport and infrastructure. But, despite this admission, we see—or think—that 457 visas are still being issued. We had 180 of them in 2013-14, we had 174 of them in 2014-15 and in 2015-16 we had 100. The minister is still issuing them but, mysteriously, on 30 September last year the department stopped publishing the statistics, so no-one has any clue anymore as to how many 457 visas the minister has issued since 30 September. The Parliamentary Library says, 'We don't know anymore, because they took the data down.'

Labor's response, in our plan to put local workers first, is sitting there in a bill on the Notice Paper that was introduced by the Leader of the Opposition and which could be voted on now. The Leader of the Opposition's speech made it very clear that skills from overseas will always be a necessary part of a modern, open economy. There is no argument about that. But this bill sets more rigorous evidence requirements for labour market testing for 457s. They are not onerous. The bill says, 'Put a job ad up for four weeks.' That seems pretty reasonable. It says, 'Make sure that, if you are applying for a visa, you have done your labour market testing within the last four months.' That seems pretty reasonable. It says, 'Ban ads that target only overseas workers.' That should not be hard. And it says, 'Crack down on job ads that set false, unreliable requirements just so employers can put an ad up and shove it into the department to get a foreign worker.'

When the Leader of the Opposition was the minister he introduced labour market testing, and those opposite opposed it. They voted against it. It is really quite simple: where employers need a 457 visa holder, they should have to provide evidence to prove it. My personal view is that labour market testing may not go far enough and that, in some sectors—in some cases—we may also need to explore price signals to reality test employers. When you have got a choice—and say: 'There's a bit of a shortage here, but with a few thousand dollars I could train a local worker to fill that job. They've got years of experience; they just need a skill'—maybe do not do a fake job ad and then go overseas. Maybe the government says: 'You really think you need that? Then, instead of training a local worker, you pay a higher fee.'

I think that in the minister's campaign for his leadership, he was polishing his head and trying to think: 'Where might I be a bit exposed? Better cover up my weaknesses, if I am going to run for leader, while I count my numbers.' He came out a few weeks ago with this fig leaf, this little sham of a fix on 457s—he got a bit of telly on it. He said, 'We're going to ban temporary foreign workers from taking jobs at fast-food stores.' That sounds all right! What he did not say is that people on 457s are not flipping burgers. This great, big announcement—this great, big crackdown on 457s—applies to a couple hundred people in management and supervisory roles. It is about time the minister actually took his responsibilities seriously, stopped playing politics and stopped trying to undermine the Prime Minister. Then again—given the Liberal Party's record on promotions—the Prime Minister stuffed up the NBN, blew tens of billions of dollars for a dud product, and they promoted him. History would say that the minister is in with a good chance.

In the last brief moment, I will restate my concerns. I cannot overstate my concern strongly enough about the delays in citizenship applications. The human cruelty of these delays for over 10,000 people—who have been waiting one year, two years or three years with no processing by the department for hundreds of people in my electorate and over 10,000 across the country—is unconscionable. The minister should address that. I will read into the Hansard some quotes from a recent audit report on the performance of the minister's department on the procurement of garrison and welfare services for Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The Auditor-General said they had 'fallen well short of effective procurement practice' and he:

… identified serious and persistent deficiencies in the three phases of procurement activity undertaken since 2012 to: … consolidate contracts; and achieve savings through an open tender process.

… Of most concern is the department’s management of processes for contract consolidation and the open tender … The department used approaches which reduced competitive pressure and significantly increased the price of the services without Government authority to do so.

If time permitted, we could detail the tripling in application fees to apply for visas or citizenship. I think this budget significantly increased the fee for an Australian citizen to come in and say, 'I've lost my citizenship certificate. I kind of need it for a passport,' or it is urgent. So, we tripled the fee—or raised the fee, I would have to check the figure—and then the waiting times blew out, so you pay more for a decreased service. There is a pattern here with this department and it is about time the minister took his job seriously and addressed the serious, systemic and growing failings in his department's administration.

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