Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I take great pride in being in this chamber today supporting the member for Holt by speaking in support of the motion that she has moved here today and standing in support of Australia's migrant workforce and all migrant workers in our country. It should not come as a surprise to see members from this side of the chamber stand up in support of workers, especially those workers who have migrated to Australia on a temporary basis. Whether their purpose for coming to Australia was to work, whether they are working in addition to studying in Australia or whether they have been engaged by an unscrupulous employer to work outside the conditions of their visa, if they're working in Australia, they deserve the ability to do so free from exploitation and free from the possibility of exploitation. That exploitation may be in the form of underpayment of wages, conditions, the minimum legal standard or a rate they are entitled to, all the way through to making migrant workers work beyond the conditions of their visa or even withholding a migrant worker's passport. Sadly the list is significantly longer than these examples.

Further to this, it should come as no surprise that it is a Labor government that comes to this parliament to stand up for the rights of working people to make it harder for employers to get away with exploiting our migrant workforce and harder to exploit all workers. Every one of us, after hearing that up to one in six migrants to Australia is paid less than the minimum wage, should find that statistic shocking to the core. We don't want to think that it's true, but we all know it is. We can't ignore our obligations and our duties as parliamentarians to stop this from happening. I know I won't, I know the member for Holt won't, I know the member for Tangney won't, I know the member for Solomon won't and I especially know the Albanese Labor government won't.

Those of us from the union movement can point to a number of examples that would count as horror stories of migrant worker exploitation in its own right, but the catalyst for action was the systemic breaches that were uncovered in 7-Eleven's stores. Luckily for those who had worked or were working at 7-Eleven at the time—and, for that matter, migrant workers across Australia who were experiencing systematic breaches of their workplace rights or entitlements—regardless of whether they knew this at the time or not, these reports were so flagrant and so well-documented by the media that it shocked the conscience to such an extent that the Turnbull government was forced to act. The Migrant Workers Taskforce was created to provide a report to the government at the time on an issue that, at least, our side of politics was not naively unaware of. At the end of the day, providing recommendations as part of the report to government might just have been what the doctor ordered. However, the previous government would do what they did best.

As we all know, the report was first commissioned back when Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister. The task force finally delivered its report to the government well after the member for Cook had ambitions for Malcolm's job and subsequently became Prime Minister himself. The Morrison government received that report in February 2019, with the government's response provided in early March 2019. An election was held not long after that. Then, nearly one whole parliament later, the Morrison government introduced the Migration Amendment (Protecting Migrant Workers) Bill 2021. They did so at the end of November 2021, knowing they were only going to have a handful of sitting days in the next year before they called an election.

Like with many other things in the life of that government, they achieved what they wanted to achieve: being able to say that they did something while they ran down the clock. It may have taken two changes of prime minister since the task force's inception, but, most importantly, it took a change of government. Now we finally have a government, the Albanese Labor government, that is introducing legislation into this place to protect our migrant workforce from exploitative practices from employers or prospective employers. Whether you want to say that the previous government's lack of real action to legislate on this matter was by circumstance or design, it is frankly no coincidence that it is Labor standing up for all working people, regardless of their origin. If they work on our shores, they are deserving of our protection in the workplace.

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