Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak about the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. As the member for Mallee and the shadow minister for regional development, I emphasise how agriculture—particularly horticulture in Mallee—relies on migrant workers. Workforce shortages are a fact of life in regional Australia, and Mallee is no exception. Businesses in Sunraysia—in Mildura, Robinvale and Swan Hill—and even further south in the Wimmera, in Horsham and beyond, need migrant workers, especially during seasonal peaks in workload. Without these migrant workers, our region would not be the productive powerhouse that it is. Speaking of which, tonight, at the Australian Export Awards, Select Harvests from Wemen are up for the Regional Exporter award for 2025. They are a finalist, and I will be there cheering them on. They are a local success story, with a $116 million turnaround last year and record sales—the best almond prices they have ever received.

I come to this debate familiar with the migration portfolio area, having been the Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in the 47th Parliament. I worked closely, in a healthy and bipartisan way, with the then-chair and now retired Labor member for Calwell, Maria Vamvakinou. I was proud to take the migration committee for a public hearing in Robinvale, in my electorate, in May 2023 to contribute to the committee's report, Migration, pathway to nation building. We met with the council for the Robinvale area, the Swan Hill Rural City Council, and with horticultural businesses and associations.

Key themes we heard in that hearing were the following. Workforce shortages were structural, not temporary, and regional industries—including agriculture, horticulture, food processing, health, aged care, transport and hospitality—were facing acute labour shortages. Employers consistently reported they could not fill roles locally, even after advertising widely. Labour shortages were a constraint on business viability, productivity and regional economic growth. In many regions, migration wasn't optional but essential. Regional communities were increasingly reliant on migrant labour to sustain essential industries. Witnesses emphasised that many sectors could not operate without migrant workers. Migrants were not only filling low skilled seasonal jobs; they were also filling critical skilled roles as nurses, doctors, mechanics, food processing specialists and farm supervisors. The migration system was not well designed for regional labour realities. Employers described the system as slow, complex, costly and highly bureaucratic. Small and regional businesses were especially disadvantaged compared to large city employers. Existing safeguards were failing too many workers. Attraction without retention is a revolving door, and reform should prioritise transparency, fairness, regional needs and long-term settlement.

Key findings of the 2024 report of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration,Migration, pathway to nation building, showed that migration is a nation-building tool that needs a long-term, long-range strategy, not a piecemeal policy. Migration should strengthen Australia's skills base and economic capacity. Migration policy must help sustain regional population and workforce needs. The current system is too complex, slow and difficult to navigate. Temporary migration should feed into stable and permanent nation-building outcomes. A fair system must protect vulnerable workers while maintaining integrity. Migration success depends on integration, not just arrival. Policy should be grounded in measurable outcomes and future workforce planning.

There are other issues across Mallee related to the migrant workforce. I note that the United Workers Union, the UWU, has a vested interest in trying to recruit migrant workers. There are stories of the UWU travelling to neighbouring Pacific countries and hauling people in to their unions before they even arrive in the country. The ABS has an inability to devise a way to count the seasonal workforce and the population of visa overstayers in the census in Robinvale. This results in a significant underestimation of the demands on local services and infrastructure and makes local planning and obtaining adequate funding incredibly difficult.

The background to that story is that, in the ABS, Robinvale has a population of around 4,000. In real terms, through other research, we know that the population is around 11,000. That creates a phenomenal problem, in terms of the health workforce, health workforce needs and health needs generally—health services. It also creates a problem in terms of education. You can imagine that the infrastructure demands on that small community are extremely stretched because the workforce population is not counted. I know of one school in Robinvale where, when I went to visit them—this is a couple of years ago now—I asked what percentage of the students were from undocumented workers. They said that it was 25 per cent of the school. That's a problem in terms of meeting the needs of the students, the parents and the community itself.

Across Mallee, and particularly in Sunraysia, there is an issue with some labour hire operators. It's fair to say that this bill will, if passed, provide the data to enable states and territories, who are responsible for regulating labour hire companies, to pick up bad and exploitative behaviour by rogue labour hire companies. Under this bill, labour hire companies will be the published sponsors. However, the limits of federal jurisdiction might come into play if there are labour hire subcontractors that actually contract out the workers. This is not to say that every labour hire contracting company is bad. I know of some excellent ones who, phenomenally, have a data platform, a technological platform, where workers can be matched so that farmers know that the person who is standing in front of them is actually the person who has the correct visa and that it is appropriate for them to be on that farm. I personally think investment should be made into these kinds of features—using our technology wisely.

Let me explain why we as the coalition have problems with this bill and currently stand to oppose it. This bill fulfils the government's December 2023 pledge to improve transparency of approved sponsors, although it arrives nearly two years after the announcement. Time and again, we tend to grapple with whether the net is being cast so wide as to create red tape and disincentive for law-abiding people while trying to catch a particular undesirable species in the ecosystem. We do not want to deter small businesses from sponsoring for fear of their activities being disclosed on the register and therefore becoming targets. There are surely more bespoke, smarter ways to sort the wheat from the chaff. This is where the government would do well to publish draft regulations promptly and commit to disallowable legislative instruments in this space. There might be scope for regulation to target the real problems in this sector and not put the good apples in with the bad.

The coalition is concerned about a number of holders of temporary visas that might be disclosed as sponsored by a particular employer. We have little information to tell us that the additional disclosure here will, within the Commonwealth's sphere of power, offer much by way of additional protection for migrant workers. Having said that, we acknowledge this legislation is intended to respond to well documented instances of wage theft and coercion in parts of the temporary skilled visa program. Again, I would state that this is not across the board.

The coalition has long insisted on integrity and employer sponsorship of migrants. However, we believe this bill goes too far. The Department of Home Affairs already has robust monitoring and compliance measures in place and extensive information about sponsors' businesses. We are not yet convinced that this extra step is actually necessary. We need assurances that the Department of Home Affairs will maintain an efficient error-correction process to protect reputable firms. The register is only one element of an antiexploitation agenda. Stronger enforcement powers and whistleblower visa arrangements remain undelivered. We need an entire ecosystem change. But we in the Nationals know from regional Australia that, under Labor, farmers are increasingly demonised and talked about as rogue businesspeople. Whether it is the insinuation they exploit workers or the claim that their opposition to the renewables rollout is insincere and farmers are obstacles in the way, Labor is trying to divide city and country people like never before.

Three times a day, Australians should thank a farmer for the food on their table if not also the shirt on their back. We see in this portfolio, energy and other portfolios a mentality that farmers are the enemy when they are the absolute foundation of our food security and our nation. That's one reason why I'm open-minded to how we ensure bills like this one adequately target the rogue elements like rogue labour-hire companies who bring industries into disrepute.

In closing, it is clear that the challenges facing regional Australia are real and immediate. In electorates like mine, industries such as agriculture, horticulture, food processing, health, aged care, transport and hospitality are battling chronic workforce shortages that are structural, not seasonal or fleeting. Employers have told us time and time again that even after exhausting recruitment efforts they simply cannot secure the workers they need. Migrant labour is not an optional extra for regions like Mallee. It is fundamental to our productivity, economic strength and the continued viability of the communities that feed our nation and the world.

The Joint Standing Committee on Migration's work in the 47th Parliament underscored the current migration system is not fit for purpose when it comes to regional realities. It is slow, complex and costly, particular for smaller employers who lack the resources of large metropolitan businesses. At the same time, some migrant workers remain vulnerable to exploitation, with insufficient flexibility and pathways to permanency. Our nation-building migration system must do better. It must strengthen Australia's skills base, support population sustainability in the regions, protect vulnerable workers and prioritise long-term settlement and integration, not just temporary arrivals. Migration policy should be strategic, coordinated and grounded in workforce planning, not piecemeal.

Against that backdrop, the coalition cannot support this bill. While we are steadfast in our commitment to integrity and employer sponsorship, and acknowledge the need to combat wage theft and coercion, the government has failed to justify the public disclosure measures proposed here—particularly the publication of employer-level data on temporary visa numbers. Such disclosure risks exposing compliant employers to pressure and intimidation while offering little additional protection to workers beyond what existing monitoring powers already provide. Too much is left to regulation with no clarity on the safeguards or correction processes that reputable firms deserve.

If the government is serious about protecting migrant workers, it should focus on delivering the stronger enforcement powers and whistleblower protections it has promised rather than imposing unnecessary and unproven public reporting requirements. For these reasons, the coalition opposes this bill.

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