Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think that one of the problems we have that has emerged in the modern economy is this misuse of the term 'migrant labour' or 'skilled migration' compared with what is actually happening under this government, which is the operation of guest worker schemes. It does not matter whether we look at the 457 visa category, or at the 417 visa category or at the student visa categories; what we see now emerging in this country under the Turnbull government, and before that the Abbott government, is a system where in one instance large numbers of people are here on visas, ostensibly to travel, but are actually really here just to work. Or they are here ostensibly to study, but in reality are just here to work. That is the way these visa categories are now operating.

If we look at the 457 visa category, what was meant to be a small number of very skilled occupations has now got bigger and bigger, taking in hairdressers, bricklayers, electricians, auto electricians and the like. What we have is a system where workers come here, essentially as guest workers, and are vulnerable to exploitation because they have a visa hanging over their heads. We know now that there are labour hire companies that operate both in the country of origin and internally in Australia. They are often separate institutions, but set up in much the same way—in a deliberate way—to exploit these workers. They promise them the world and then extract the maximum amount of their wages out of them while they are here.

That is the way that this system is being utilised and abused, not by an employer but by an economic system where the head contractor or the head institution offloads it to a subcontractor, who offloads it to a subcontractor and so on, creating this chain where it is very difficult to hold anybody accountable. But, of course, we know from the member for Bendigo's previous motions and from my previous motions in this House that this is not a new problem, that this has existed in the retail industry and in the food production and agriculture industries. And, bizarrely, now we hear in this House—I almost fell off my chair!—that it is even in social work, in the residential care of vulnerable youth.

What we have on the one hand is a sophisticated and manipulative system, which sets out to deliberately evade the legislative intent of this parliament and all of our laws, being operated by very large institutions in our country—chicken companies, hotels, retailers and the like—who are completely blase about the application of law or even publicity around this issue. They carry on regardless, with a merry disregard for this parliament, for community standards and even for the government.

The Turnbull government to its credit, as we heard from the previous speaker, announced a task force and the like. My only quibble with that is that he said it is a 'migrant task force'. These people are not migrants. Migrants come, they settle, they have permanent residency and they have the security of their visa. What we are talking about here are guest workers. They are citizens of another country and they are allowed to work here under a strict set of visa requirements, which are being systemically abused.

We have to have a good hard look at it and we need to take action on it, not the sort of rhetorical action that we see out of this government, which is very good at beating up on unions and very good at having legislative instruments beating up on unions. It is keen to take up this parliament's time on those matters, but it is not very keen to take up this parliament's time on legislative instruments that would help and protect migrant workers and, in doing so, shut down these rackets—and that is what they are: they are organised rackets to exploit these poor workers—and protect Australian workers, who, as a consequence, face unfair competition because they are being paid award rates while these other workers are being systemically ripped off.

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