James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

Firstly, I obviously commend the sentiment in this motion regarding ensuring that workers aren't exploited in this country—any workers, particularly, as this motion touches on, migrant workers. I certainly believe that we have a relatively robust framework in this country to make sure that, where wrongdoing occurs, the avenues are there for taking that up and potentially initiating prosecution. We have the Fair Work Commission. I accept that a lot of migrants who might be in that circumstance could do with some more support and understanding of what their rights are and how they can access remedies for mistreatment.

But I also want to take the opportunity to put on the record that I hope the great employers of this nation, particularly small businesses, don't take this motion as an indication that parliament thinks that anyone who employs someone has a natural inclination to exploit them, because that's complete rubbish. In fact, I have never come across a business in my electorate that doesn't value its employees as its most important asset. Businesses invest in their employees. Very often they pay them more than they need to. They certainly access the skilled migration system and find it of great value, and they do that after they have exhausted the avenue of employing Australians. They work through the very difficult skilled migration system, and I agree with the intention of dramatically simplifying that. I hope that is genuinely the government's intention.

The problem has been the unions. For years and years, they have stood in the way of that. The unions have always thought that a migrant is here to steal an Australian's job. That's been the policy position of the unions, who have fought against any attempt to simplify the system. We know that, when we were in government just recently, the unions visited South-East Asian embassies, telling them not to sign up to our visa program. They said not to do it, because in the view of the unions this was some type of attempt for us to help migrants come in and fill jobs in regional communities that apparently should be kept for Australians. These people just don't exist to fill the roles. We wish that they did. 'I'd much rather go through all the trouble of sponsoring someone to come in through the skilled migration program rather than employ an Australian,' said no business ever! There is no way you wouldn't much prefer to employ an Australian. But obviously we value the migration program and the opportunity to bring skilled workers into our economy, because we all recognise the benefit of that and we want our economy to be growing. We don't want to constrict our economy by not having the appropriate workforce.

The government have two positions here, or their union masters have one and they've got another. This one says that migrants need more support and protection, but we've got a union movement trying to constrict migration into the country. That's why we know that the ag visa is a nonstarter with the Labor Party. It's nothing to do with what the view of the government might be; it's just the rules of union control over that political party. These are the things you can and can't do, and the unions make and dictate those policies. So we're all for sensible, skilled migration into this country and we're all for addressing skills shortages, particularly in regional areas. We demonstrated that in government. Businesses don't want to exploit workers. That's not the default position of employers whatsoever.

This motion talks about people being paid less than the minimum wage. That's unacceptable. I know a lot of people earning less than the minimum wage. You know who they are? They are small-business owners. They are people who, when you look at the amount of hours they put into their business—their cafe, newsagency or whatever—and you divide that by what they are earning, they are being paid way below the minimum wage. Some of the lowest-paid workers in our economy are small-business owners, people who own their own business. They get paid last if they get paid at all, and in tough times they don't get paid at all. They can lose money and lose their business.

In speaking to this motion, I don't want it to seem in any way that there's some default position that employers are evil and always seeking to exploit their workforce like we're in a Charles Dickens novel. That's not the case at all. I stand up for employers and say, 'Thank you for what you do: for running businesses, for employing Australians, for paying the taxes that allow us to have the society that we so richly appreciate.'

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