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

Exactly. And it's important, Assistant Minister, that the parliament actually spends time thinking about workplace exploitation, not diddling around with administrative changes. Your government has not responded to the Senate committee reports on vulnerable workers.

Mrs Andrews interjecting—

You might laugh. It might be funny that people are working in almost slavery like conditions across the country! You might find that funny. I call on the government to stop being complacent, stop pretending to act, stop coming in here and waffling about administrative changes, and actually do something about this. We have 1.2 million or more people in this country right now on temporary visas with work rights attached. That's a fact. They include people on 457s, working holiday makers and international students.

I think it's difficult for people who are born in this country or came here many decades ago, in a different migration world, to truly understand the terror that is caused for temporary migrants by employers holding their migration sponsorship over them. We've had reports of sexual slavery. We've had numerous reports of underpayment. I remember an employer in one of those programs on TV last year, and he said, 'Visa holders are the best workers you can get because, if they don't do what you want, you can just put them on a boat and send them back.' That is the attitude that needs to be addressed, and it's not going to be addressed, despite all the fine rhetoric of the government, by tax file number comparisons. Worthy as it goes, it's not sufficient to address the terror that's caused—'Do what I say or I'll dob you in and you'll be deported.' Much more needs to be done.

I know from conversations with people in my community about this that it's often thought, 'Temporary migrants, vulnerable workers—that doesn't affect me; that's other people.' You can kind of tune out and say, 'That's bad. The government should do something about that, but it doesn't affect me.' It does. It affects every Australian. It affects everyone seeking a job in the labour market, particularly in the lower-skilled industries and lower-paid occupations. It's not fair that unscrupulous employers won't be hit by this bill—the government has still refused to act—and employers trying to do the right thing are undercut by employers who are cheating the system. It's not fair that the integrity of the workplace relations system is undermined and, importantly, as has been shown repeatedly, it distorts the labour market and wages. We talk about low wage growth, particularly at the low end, for low-skilled workers. Well, in many industries a big reason for that is that we have temporary migrants being exploited, being paid below award wages, working unpaid over time and so on and so forth. How do you bargain in that environment against an employer. This is real life.

So, in concept the bill is fine, albeit years late. But, in execution, I might note—because I did read most of the Bills Digestthat, despite all the time they've had, three years, it's badly drafted. So, despite the delay, it's a sloppy job. There's discussion in paragraph 338 (2)(d) around it being ambiguous, and the Law Council said, 'You really need to remove it or redraft it.' But it wasn't just the Law Council; the government's own Scrutiny of Bills Committee said, 'This isn't very good.' So it's not even a good job.

In summary, the government's attitude on this is insufficient. Every time you bring a bill in here I and other Labor members will stand up and say, 'It's not enough. Go back to those Senate inquiries and bring some legislation forward that addresses the problems.' The government may find it funny but they are serious issues for so many people in my electorate, a heavily multicultural area. I have this old-fashioned view that we should actually represent people in the country, not just citizens. In that regard, I know the member for Willis and I have tens of thousands of people living in our electorates, in our communities, contributing in different ways to the community, who are being exploited right now because of the government's lack of action.

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