Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I think you had 58 seconds to go, after all those fine words, when you finally fessed up that, despite all the concern about exploitation of migrant workers and all the noble sentiments, you're actually not going to vote for the bill. This is not 'a half-baked proposal', to quote you; this is something that came out of the Migration Strategy, following the migration review, that is responding to a serious problem, which is the foul, disgusting, shameful, ongoing exploitation of migrant workers.

Let me address two of the points that the member for Nicholls made. Firstly, in relation to the TSMIT, let's be very clear about what we heard there. We heard 3½ minutes of a circular argument, but, when you strip it back, what the member opposite was arguing for was lower wages. That's not a surprise, given the entire economic management philosophy of the previous government was a 'deliberate design feature' of their economic management to keep wages down. The member spoke of the shock and outrage at the TSMIT. For those listening at home, that's the temporary skilled migration income threshold. It's the minimum amount that an employer bringing in a migrant worker has to pay them. He said: 'This is terrible! It's jumped from $53,000 to $70,000!' Shock, horror!

Well, do you know why? It's because, in their nine years in government, those opposite didn't index it. They held it at $53,000. So, in real terms, employers were able to bring in workers year after year and pay them less and less. Guess what that does? The economic labour market analysis was absolutely clear: it holds down the wages of Australian workers. When employers can too easily bring in migrant workers and pay them a pittance, it holds down the wages of low-skilled Australians. That was absolutely clear. It was established through parliamentary inquiry after parliamentary inquiry with labour market submissions and labour market analysis. But, of course, they did nothing about it. They wouldn't index the minimum wage that you could pay migrant workers, because that was their agenda—to hold down wages. Their ministers actually said it. I want to be very clear about and put on the record what they actually meant by that.

Secondly, we learned about the opposition's argument for 'greater flexibility' in visas so that it's easier for employers to bring in low-paid workers. So, when you hear all the hysterical rhetoric and the chest beating from most of the opposition backbench, undermining their leader and calling for massive cuts to migration—they'll never actually specify what they want to cut. Is it Australians falling in love with people from overseas? Are they going to cut the partner visas? Is it working holiday makers, who actually do the agricultural work in regional Australia? Is it international students, who keep the hospitality sector going? They're never prepared to outline which regions are no longer going to have GPs or healthcare workers or which aged-care centres are going to close. That's the debate they want to have out there, but the debate which they want to have in here is, 'Bring more migrants in, pay them less, drag down wages and give employers greater flexibility.' That's exactly what the member for Nicholls was arguing—exactly. It's unbelievable. The hypocrisy!

I thought that this bill would be routine. I did. Aware of the history, the briefing is clear, the case is clear, a lot of fine words about combating migrant worker exploitation—I genuinely thought it would be routine. But then we find out, with 58 seconds to go for the previous speaker, that the opposition is going to oppose this bill. He talked about unions. It was cute. He said that unions have a place in Australia—in history—and that unions did fine work, historically. But, when push comes to shove, every time, the thing they always get most angry about—it's the age-old debate of workers versus employers, isn't it? The Labor Party believes in bringing capital and labour together, but what really triggers those opposite is the idea that workers should actually get paid properly, get their fair share and be looked after.

The great Australian promise, so we say, is a fair go. The great Australian promise of Australian multiculturalism is a fair go—that everyone gets a fair crack at life here and gets treated fairly under the law, no matter their ethnicity, their circumstances, how long they've been here, their visa class and so on. We're all equal under the law. Mostly, we live up to that promise. Mostly, we do well. But, at times, for too many Australians, including many in my electorate—I spoke at the African Music and Cultural Festival in the middle of Melbourne. Forty per cent of Australia's African-born population, to illustrate the point, live in Victoria. For too many people in that community, it's structural racism that means they don't get a fair go. You see it in employment data.

Mostly, we live up to our promise, but one of the most shameful, disgusting examples of where we fail as a nation and undermine our own values is the exploitation of migrant workers. It's not good enough that every now and again we see the media splashes—and people go 'Oh, that's quite bad'—of people living in squalor, being underpaid, with sexual and financial exploitation, human trafficking and slavery They're strong words, but that's actually what's going on in our country with vulnerable migrant workers.

Those opposite want to argue for lower wages, argue for employers to be able to bring in more and more workers on low wages and argue against the role of unions in exposing exploitation. I say this very genuinely: I was born in Australia. As far as I can tell, we go back four generations. Hopefully, they were convicts and had a good time—I don't know. But, for those of us born in Australia, it's really hard to understand, viscerally, the vulnerability that a temporary visa status has over someone, the extreme power that an employer can have over a temporary worker, the threat: 'I will have your visa cancelled. I will report you. I will cancel your sponsorship unless you do what I say unless you work extra hours, unless you pay me kickbacks, unless you put up with these foul living conditions, unless you give me sexual services,' or worse. That threat, that insecurity, in itself, creates an enormous power dynamic that those of us who take our citizenship for granted just don't truly understand. It's not a criticism. It's an explanation of the lived experience of a lot of people in our country—people who do critical work, people who work in food service, people who work in hospitality, work in agriculture, work in aged care and so on.

I think everyone would agree—and I hear those opposite and I believe them—that the exploitation of migrant workers is wrong morally but people accept that. It's not who we are as a country. We've done very well as a country over centuries now from a model of permanent migration, where those people who come and make a contribution and meet our labour market standards over time can seek permanent migration and build a life here and contribute with security. We've done well from that.

We don't have mass migration. Some of them like to bang on on Sky News. We have a highly controlled, orderly migration program. We're not experiencing what we're seeing in Europe. We're not experiencing the long-rolling issues on the southern US border that dominate the media and infect our politics. We have a highly controlled, tightly managed migration program. It can go up, it can go down, but governments of the day are in control of that program.

The exploitation of migrant workers—this creation of a permanently temporary underclasses hidden from the view of society—does us no credit as a people. It also harms Australian workers. This is the point. When we fail to act on the exploitation of migrant workers, it puts downwards pressure on the wages of Australian workers. It hurts everyone, not just morally, not in the conception of who we are as a people, but economically. I gave the example before and it remains current. If the minimum wage that's paid to migrant workers isn't sufficient, then it drags down the wages of Australian workers. This has been proved over and over again. It's also proved in aggregate with one of the worst, stupidest policy decisions the former government made to uncap the—

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