Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister is on the record as saying he wants immigrants to adopt Australian values and learn to speak English, but as usual the reality of his actions illustrates the opposite. His policies are bringing in foreign workers who do not speak English, let alone sign up to Australian values. In fact, his 457 visa policy is specifically designed to prevent foreign workers from signing up to one essential Australian value that this country was founded on, and that is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. The Prime Minister’s rorted foreign worker visas are being used to undermine pay and conditions for all Australian workers.

There were media reports on Monday that a building site in Sydney has had to be closed down because workers brought in via the much-rorted foreign worker visas are not able to speak English and therefore pose a serious health and safety risk. One building worker told the Sydney Morning Herald the Chinese labourers were importing unsafe work practices. He said, ‘We’d see people on the roof, 20 metres up in the air, and you couldn’t even yell at them to get down.’ The Prime Minister’s 457 visas have brought in Chinese workers with no English who are working for Chinese wages. They are part of the coalition’s wages race to the bottom; low-wage workers threatening the wages and conditions of all workers in this country.

The Liberal-National coalition wants Australia to compete with China and India on wages. Labor says we must compete with these countries on high skills not low wages. That is why, on top of ripping up his extreme IR laws and ending these visa rorts, Labor will also abolish the Prime Minister’s trade skills training visas, which give apprenticeships to unskilled migrants rather than young Australians. The biggest threat to Australian values right now is the coalition’s one-two punch to working Australians on immigration and industrial relations. If the Prime Minister really wants to maintain and strengthen Australian values, he should start with fair reforms in our own workplaces. The government’s hypocrisy has been exposed. He says one thing about immigrants and does another. The Prime Minister must be judged on his actions not his words.

The Prime Minister’s hypocrisy on English was exposed in federal parliament on Monday when he denied that temporary foreign workers coming to Australia need to speak English. The Prime Minister was asked if he thought that being able to follow site safety instructions in English was a critical requirement for foreign workers at the ABC Tissues construction site in Sydney. His response was:

I am not suggesting for a moment that everybody who comes to this country should be able to speak the English language when they arrive. I have never suggested that.

But on the Saturday previously the Prime Minister said:

Simple tasks like securing a job ... would be so much harder in Australia without a working knowledge of English.

The Prime Minister has refused to apply the same standard to temporary foreign workers on a work site. The coalition government’s 457 visa scheme has no specific requirements for the ability to speak English. There has been a 66 per cent increase in temporary skilled migrants since 2003-04. The Prime Minister does not seem to care whether foreign workers coming to Australia can speak enough English to work safely. How can the Prime Minister think that it is okay for construction workers not to be able to read and follow safety instructions in English?

Reports today from an ACTU media release show the tragic story of a temporary worker from China who has been sacked and now faces deportation after being severely exploited by a Hawthorn printing company. That is further evidence that the Federal Government’s temporary worker visa program is creating a new tier of second-class workers in Australia. This temporary worker came to Australia almost one year ago to seek a better life. He states that he paid an employment agent in China $10,000 for a position in the Australian printing industry and agreed to pay another $10,000 ‘lawyer’s fee’ in weekly instalments of $200 from his wages to his employer in Australia. These payments are reported to be illegal. He was told he had a job in Australia for up to 4 years. For the last year he has worked 60 hours a week as a printer, guillotine operator and labourer while being paid around $12 an hour; less than the legal minimum wage and hundreds of dollars a week under the award.

Now that the $10,000 ‘lawyer fee’ has been repaid his employer has terminated his employment and has evicted him from the unheated, company owned house he shares with three other men and for which he pays his boss around $120 a week rent. Under the terms of his federal government 457 visa, he has up to four weeks to find another job or face deportation back to China. This is just another example of gross exploitation of overseas workers under the federal government’s 457 visa program.

On Monday this week unions also exposed unsafe and exploitative working conditions for around 50 Chinese workers at the $60 million Wetherill Park tissue paper mill construction site in Western Sydney. The workers used equipment that did not meet safety specifications. They did not have the appropriate licences to operate vehicles and were allowed to carry out dangerous tasks. There were reports of a man welding a pipe as he was tied to it while swaying high in the air. (Time expired)