Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. Over recent years there's been a lot of misinformation about migration. Some of it has just been through misunderstandings, but much of it has been deliberate, intended to sow division within communities, to score cheap political points or to divert attention away from the real issues that are causing social struggles.

The fact is that migration has been critical to Australia's development, and this has been particularly so since World War II. In the years since then, there has been an influx of migrants. Immediately after World War II, we saw a huge number of British and European migrants come to this country. In the decades that followed, that changed, with people coming here from many other parts of the world.

The reality is that today we often speak of Australia as being a successful multicultural country, with, indeed, almost every country in the world being represented by people who now live here. In the past four decades, under Labor and coalition governments, we have seen, I understand, some seven million or more people come and permanently settle in Australia. Yet I accept that Australians want a controlled immigration program. They want an immigration program that serves Australia's needs and that they can have confidence in. Importantly, they want an immigration program that is not rorted, yet that is what has been happening over recent years, during which, because of widespread conflict overseas, desperate people fleeing war or persecution have been prepared to do whatever it takes to come to Australia.

These are, indeed, vulnerable people who are then taken advantage of by, sometimes, people smugglers who put them through life-threatening journeys, and if they do manage to reach Australia, they then are often taken advantage of by employers or job recruiters. Often people of their own culture are those very job recruiters—people who promise them work on the basis that they can secure employment for them but who then exploit them in the process. If I get time, I'll talk a bit more about that later on.

In 2016, the coalition government established the Migrant Workers' Taskforce, and I commend them for doing so. They established that taskforce in response to revelations of serious migrant worker exploitation. An inquiry was then held, chaired by Professor Alan Fels AO, with Deputy Chair David Cousins AM. The findings of that inquiry were released in the Report of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce in March 2019. A paper released by Australia Policy Online, which I believe articulates what the real issue was so well, had this to say in comment on the taskforce report:

Wage exploitation is of great concern to the Australian community. It is damaging to Australia's reputation and may lead to negative flow-on effects to the proper functioning of the labour market and the economy. It is unfair not only to migrant workers, but also to other employees who are undercut on wages and job opportunities, and law abiding employers trying to compete on price. Australia prides itself on being a country where the principle of fairness underpins our economic and social relationships. However, migrant worker exploitation is a direct repudiation of this.

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Migrant workers who are in Australia on a temporary basis may have poor knowledge of their workplace rights, are young and inexperienced, may have low English language proficiency and try to fit in with cultural norms and expectations of other people from their home countries. These factors combine to make them particularly vulnerable to unscrupulous practices at work … Fears about the consequences of approaching government agencies are common among migrants from less democratic countries than our own.

The paper says a lot more, of course, but I think those sentiments sum up what the issue is and what we are responding to today—that people have indeed been exploited for much too long. That exploitation can take the form of underpaying wages; forcing workers to work extended unpaid hours; threatening to cancel a worker's visa if they complain or raise concerns about their work conditions; coercing workers to hand over their passport, as the member for Adelaide referred to earlier; forcing workers to work in unsafe or poor health and safety conditions; cramming workers into inadequate housing; and even physical threats. In June, a parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales heard from a GP in Wagga Wagga that hundreds of women were 'seeking abortions that they would not normally want' in order to keep their work visas. That is the extent to which the exploitation seems to have manifested itself. It is because of those concerns that we have this legislation.

The taskforce I referred to earlier, commissioned by the last coalition government, found issues that I believe were widely known throughout the community—issues that I think everyone in the chamber would have come across at some stage or another. The number of worker exploitation cases that have been exposed over the years is a matter that should be of concern to this parliament. The taskforce provided 22 recommendations in their report; yet, three years later, the last coalition government had done nothing with them. It commissioned a report and then just sat on it, as it did with Graeme Samuel's review into the EPBC Act. It seems that the last coalition government was very good at kicking the can down the road on these important issues by commissioning reports that would obviously delay any response from the government, and then, once they'd received them, did nothing. Once again, it is up to Labor to fix the problem, and that is what this legislation does.

This legislation sets up a register of approved work sponsors. In doing so, it will provide transparency, accountability, and enhanced protections for temporary skilled migrants. It will also support temporary skilled migrant workers who need to find a new sponsor if that need arises. And, as other speakers have made absolutely clear, this legislation arises after extensive consultation—consultation by the previous coalition government and then by the Albanese Labor government; consultation that went far and wide throughout the community and included community groups, business, and so on.

This legislation goes a long way towards stamping out some of the problems I referred to earlier. It may not fix every problem, but it's a start in the right direction. I have no doubt that worker exploitation will continue. In fact, worker exploitation isn't simply limited to skilled migrants who come from overseas; it occurs on a regular basis in many other sectors. However, the fact remains that skilled migrants make up the largest cohort of migrants to Australia. We face skilled workforce shortages again because the last coalition government did nothing about training up Australians. Instead, they decimated TAFE while simultaneously paying huge sums to shonky training organisations. The Albanese Labor government is fixing that as well, with free TAFE training. But, logically, it will take some time before those trainees are work ready. I understand that, to date, over 725,000 people have enrolled in free TAFE courses. I commend them for doing so, and I look forward to them filling those skill shortages for which we're currently having to find people from overseas.

In the interim, however, we do have a skilled workforce shortage, which must be met. If it's not met, then the whole community will suffer. If we don't bring in skilled tradespeople, we can't build the very houses that everybody is screaming out for at the rate at which they need to be built. If we don't bring in skilled tradespeople or skilled professionals from overseas we won't be able to fill the health and medical workforce shortages that we're seeing right around the country, particularly in the country regions, where, I understand, that, if it weren't for the skilled professionals that we are bringing in from overseas, there would be communities without doctors and nurses.

Look at the aged-care sector. Again, if it weren't for the skilled people coming in from overseas, it is very likely that many of those centres would be unable to operate and the vulnerable older people that we have in this country who are looking for aged care would not be able to get it. On one hand we have a real need that must be met, and on the other hand we have a shortage of the skills that are required to provide the services that people need. We need to find a way of fixing that that is appropriate in terms of both meeting our migration statistics and our migration intake and ensuring that those people who come into this country are then given work and paid accordingly and are not in any way abused as people have been on so many occasions.

In concluding my remarks, I'll make this point. Worker exploitation is, as I said earlier, not just isolated to migrant workers; it occurs across the board. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that migrant workers who come here are exploited much more so than others. I used some examples earlier on of why that is the case, but I'll simply make this point. Imagine someone fleeing a war-torn country under circumstances in which they risk their lives and then reaching Australia. They would do anything they need to do in order to stay here, not only to protect their own life but also to be able to earn a few dollars so they can then send that back to family members who they left in their home country. These are vulnerable people who are at the mercy of unscrupulous operators, and we have seen example after example of that here in Australia. It is not to say that all employers are unscrupulous, but we need to ensure that those who are unscrupulous are no longer able to do what they are doing.

I have heard the concerns from members opposite that this legislation goes too far and that too much information is going to have to be provided to authorities with respect to employers who take on migrant workers. I say to members opposite that those employers who are doing the right thing have nothing to fear. This legislation is no different to any other piece of legislation which regulates activities in this country or provides laws. Laws are always provided only in order to control the minority who do the wrong thing. If it weren't for the minority who do the wrong thing, we probably wouldn't need any laws whatsoever. This is simply another example of where the government need to act to protect vulnerable people as we have done in so many other areas of government policy. I commend this legislation to the House.

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