Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity in my adjournment speech this evening to call on the Abbott government to grant amnesty to staff of the 7-Eleven stores. These are students who are working on student visas who may be in breach of their visa conditions. It is a test of the character of this government. If the government fails to grant amnesty to these workers, whose plight is now well documented, they will be complicit in the continuing exploitation of hundreds—indeed, it is alleged, thousands—of workers.

It is now one week since Adele Ferguson's inquiry into the 7-Eleven chain of shops aired on Four Corners. In it she documented the appalling conditions that young students on working visas are being subjected to in a significant number of 7-Eleven stores. It took courage and care for the people who participated in that story to ask questions and gather evidence to document exactly what has been happening in 7-Eleven stores. I want to acknowledge the civic leadership of Mr Michael Fraser, a consumer advocate who did his own citizenship research across 60 7-Eleven stores. That is no small feat for one person to undertake.

I also commend the students who came forward to put their experience on the public record. Their courage in documenting and telling this story is worthy of note. It is also an act of hope, hope that by telling their story they might prevent the suffering of others. How this ends, though, depends on if the government can find any integrity or enough integrity to provide the protection that is needed to free these students from the oppression and exploitation so clearly exposed on Four Corners last week.

The scale and audacity of the exploitation revealed on the show took the nation's breath away. The revelation in the mainstream media that 7-Eleven stores around the country have been abusing their staff and failing to pay living wages, let alone award wages, shocked the nation. Further questions were raised by the program about the degree to which the 7-Eleven head office were complicit in the systemic underpayment of workers. There have been increasing releases of information about how far this may go. It has been put forward in some of those more recent articles that came through later in the week that it goes all the way to the US.

In the days following the Four Corners program, many further articles have been written filling out the details of the exploitative business model in operation on a corner near you and right across the nation. The articles and TV reports have in turn prompted other people to come forward and contact journalists writing about this disgraceful situation. They are contacting respected journalists, confident that they can tell their story without the threat that they might be deported for breaching their visa conditions. And many of them have done that—they have been coerced into breaching their visa conditions because of their jobs and because of what they were asked to do in their training phase—and then they have been blackmailed into accepting gross underpayment of wages under threat of being reported to immigration because they breached their visa conditions. It is a terrible bind to be caught in—so far away from home, with no clarity about who to turn to for support and a boss, in many or most of these stores, determined to keep these students as vulnerable and ill-informed as possible in order to increase their own profit.

Why are they not coming forward to people other than journalists? They fear that if they tell their story in any other context, they may well be reported and deported. Journalists such as Sarah Ferguson, Sarah Danckert and Klaus Toft have continued to fill out the story by drawing on evidence provided by students themselves and by ethical members of 7-Eleven staff who have decided that enough is enough. With staff log books, court documents and financial accounts from many stores, the way the half-wage scam works is revealed. Essentially time sheets are doctored with non-existent ghost workers allocated work hours in the books, while a student works all those excess hours, but, when their pay comes through, they are routinely working for half the pay and doing double the hours.

In the 7:30 report by Matt Peacock that aired on Thursday evening last week, a young student Barat Karna who had been dismissed from his job at the 7-Eleven store, at Heatherbrae in the Hunter region, because he would not continue to work more than his 20 hours. He described himself as 'a modern century slave'. And that is what these students are: modern day slaves, exploited by a business model that has been shared and replicated by many franchise owners in the 7-Eleven chain. Stories about similar events occurring in Australia Post and other chains of stores have been aired in recent weeks.

For those who have not been following the story closely, this is how it goes. A foreign student on a student working visa, who may be studying in a university setting or for a certificate or diploma at a registered training organisation is allowed to undertake 40 hours of work per fortnight to support themselves while they study. The Ferguson report revealed that students who secured jobs were forced to work these extra hours while undertaking training. So right at the very beginning of their employment, they go over the hours they are allowed to work. Thus, from the very start they are set up to be in breach of their visa conditions. It is highly manipulative. That is why it is so important that the government actually provides an amnesty to these students. As I said in my opening comment, failure to provide an amnesty to these students means that they are at risk of deportation and at risk of being removed from accessing the care and the help they need.

For the record, I want to register clearly that unions and workers' rights groups have been raising their concerns for some time that a range of working visas—not just this student visa, but the 457 and 417 visas as well—are being misused across the country. Currently the Senate is undertaking extensive inquiries into these matters. The Senate Reference Committee for Education and Employment, ably chaired by my colleague Senator Sue Lines, has been investigating these matters since June last year. I want to put on the record that I first asked questions of the Fair Work Ombudsman about 7-Eleven at one of the committee's hearing in Adelaide in July. Indeed, the Fair Work Ombudsman has been engaged with 7-Eleven on no fewer than three occasions over the last several years. This is not a new thing, and it does raise questions about the power and the resourcing of the ombudsman. Clearly there is something wrong with the process as it exists.

This Liberal government needs to respond and take action. In question time today Senator Abetz refused to take responsibility or to take any action or to give any satisfactory response. He harped on about this being a problem that has been going on for many years, as if this issue had nothing to do with the government of the day. A scheme like this, and exploitation like this, will always find a way to skirt around laws trying to prohibit it. That is why there needs to be suitable investigation and punishments available to the ombudsman.

This status quo simply cannot continue. We go through all of the processes where an employer is proven to be untrustworthy and proven to be exploiting workers, and then another three or four years further down the track we find we are going back over the same territory. Business models that exploit vulnerable visa holders are corrupt and corrupting. They reduce opportunities for local jobseekers; they undermine ethical, competing businesses—small businesses that were in competition with these 7-Elevens but that have now gone under because they paid the right wages and were doing the right thing by employing workers from their local community. They too have been exploited by this disgraceful scam.

What has become apparent is the ease with which employers are able to skirt the current labour market testing requirements when looking to engage new employees. Temporary workers of any kind should not be used as a cheap form of labour, and they should always be paid at levels that meet all Australian standards. What we have seen in the 7-Eleven story is a powerful reminder that unions have a vital, a critical, role to play in the education of workers about their rights. They provide wage safety in addition to occupational health and safety for Australian workers.

People who have been caught up in these wage scams should seek help, and they can get help by calling 131 732 or 131 SDA, which is a hotline to assist them with their inquiries and help them get the information they need to get their wages. Basically we know that the impediment to seeking help is so significant if people fear they are going to be deported. The SDA union has already said that, if enough individuals come forward, they would lodge a claim for back pay on behalf of exploited workers, and I would encourage all workers to do that.

This is a series of individual horror stories, but it is more than that. It is a series of stories about businesses which thought they could work outside the law. The government needs to stand up tomorrow to make sure that an amnesty is granted so these workers can get the care, support and safety they deserve. (Time expired)