John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I notice the member for Jagajaga interjects. If she is a little patient, I will come to what she said. I remind the House that the member alleged that overseas workers were being given preferential treatment compared with Australian workers. That claim was totally and completely false. Since it was refuted in this House, I have received a letter from Gary Teys, the Deputy Chairman of Teys Bros. I will table the letter in a moment. Amongst other things, this is what he had to say. It bears very directly on this dishonest campaign that is being waged by the opposition alleging that people entering this country on temporary 457 visas are taking the jobs of Australians. This is what he had to say:

It seems strange to me that we have become the target of the opposition and the media in this matter of overseas workers on temporary 457 Visas.

He goes on to say:

Had it not been for the overseas workers in our plants we would never have been able to fully utilise these facilities. Despite extensive efforts to recruit Australian Workers through advertising and enlist the assistance of the AMIEU—

an Australian union—

to provide us with names of workers, we were unsuccessful in obtaining the numbers of staff required at our various plants.

This is completely contradictory to what was represented in this House by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. It is of a piece with the way in which question time day after day is used by the opposition to make completely false claims about the impact of this on the country. He goes on to say—and this really puts it in perspective:

We saw the overseas workers as our only opportunity to keep the plants operating at an efficient level and we are certain that if the labour shortage had not been filled by these overseas workers, then some of our plants would have been forced to close, thus costing the jobs of Australian Workers.

In other words, not only were these foreign workers brought in because there were no Australian workers to fill the new jobs but, if they had not been brought in, existing Australian workers in jobs would have lost their jobs. In other words, there would have been a double whammy effect. That is the sort of policy and attitude that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and her leader are flogging around this country. It does a great injustice to the foreign workers, it does a great injustice to Australian companies and it is contrary to all the experience of a nation that is now experiencing levels of unemployment that the Leader of the Opposition when he was last in government could only have dreamt of. I table the letter.

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