Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister update the House on recent reports on future demand for labour in the Australian workforce?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bowman for his question. I can indicate to him that last week the Prime Minister and I launched a series of seminars which will be held throughout Australia which highlight, particularly for the business community in Australia, the publication Workforce tomorrow. This publication summarises research which shows that in the space of just five years Australia could face a workforce shortage of up to 195,000 people because of the ageing of the population. The ageing of the population, the health of the economy and the government’s previous workforce relations reforms have contributed to a 30-year low in unemployment and a demand for labour which in many regions exceeds supply. We see this in particular in regional areas of Australia. As part of the response, the government has also met this demand through skilled migration.

I note in this regard that yesterday on the Sunday program the Leader of the Opposition criticised the government for importing ‘270,000 skilled migrants’ since 1996. I ask: what is the Leader of the Opposition’s policy to deal with skill shortages? Does he oppose skilled migration to this country or is this merely an attempt on the part of the Australian Labor Party to engage in some sort of xenophobic sentiments about skilled migrants? This is significant because in November last year, in the discussion of a matter of public importance in this chamber, the Leader of the Opposition said that Australian children would:

... find themselves dispensed with as apprentices, as foreigners are brought into this country, prepared to work for virtually nothing as apprentices ...

That was what the Leader of the Opposition said last November. Last week the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, warned that the immigration department was planning to ‘bring in Chinese workers who will work at whatever wages the company really dictates’. This sounds disturbingly like the rhetoric of the union campaigns in Australia in the 1890s. Let us look at the facts around the trade skills training visas for apprentices, because they do not take apprenticeships from Australian workers. Firstly, they are only available in regional areas where there is a skills shortage. Secondly, there must be a relevant regional certification body to certify that a vacancy cannot be filled locally and that there is a skills shortage in that particular occupation in the region. On top of that, the regional certification bodies in most cases are actually state government bodies. We happen to have Labor state governments in Australia.

Here we have a response to an issue identified by Labor state governments wanting to do something responsible about ensuring that there are actually jobs and businesses that continue to thrive, particularly in regional areas of Australia. The government is getting on with the job of creating employment opportunities and continuing to develop the Australian economy. What we hear from the Leader of the Opposition is simply xenophobic dog whistling to his mates in the union movement—that is, the same union movement that gave us the White Australia Policy.