Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, I present the committee’s report, entitled Negotiating the maze: review of arrangements for overseas skills recognition, upgrading and licensing, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—Skilled migration is the subject of much comment in the Australian community. There is concern that the level of skills of those coming into the country is not equivalent to Australian quality and safety standards and that lower skilled workers are being used to undercut the wages of existing workers. People need to know that Australia’s skills recognition system is fair and well managed. A strong commitment to local workers and improving the skill levels of our current workforce is essential. However, skilled migration is an additional method of addressing the immediate skills shortages facing Australia.

Australia currently needs overseas trained workers such as doctors, engineers, electricians and plumbers. An overly bureaucratic system that impedes the timely arrival of much needed skilled labour does not assist industry in providing economic growth for Australia. Anecdotal evidence from my own state, for example, suggests that a lack of skilled workers is having a serious impact on plans for a number of major mining ventures. For all of these reasons, this was a very timely inquiry for the committee to undertake. The current picture is complex and a number of witnesses likened the task of navigating Australia’s skills recognition system to trying to find their way through a maze. If they started in the wrong place, they might find themselves lost in a bureaucratic muddle, unable to go forward or back.

I want to highlight four areas that were of particular interest to the committee. Firstly, the report looks at how Australia’s skills recognition and licensing arrangements can be streamlined and simplified. The committee’s recommendations combine with recent Council of Australian Governments initiatives to create a more streamlined framework for the future. The committee supports COAG’s initiative for the creation of national skills assessment and registration bodies for the health profession. For the non-health professions, the committee recommends continuation of existing arrangements but with improved monitoring by the Department of Education, Science and Training.

For the trades, the committee strongly supports COAG’s push for more effective mutual recognition arrangements between the states and territories and new offshore assessment processes for trades in demand. However, the committee highlights the need for an accelerated time frame for these arrangements and recommends a tripartite review of the initiative. The committee also recommends that the Tradesmen’s Rights Regulation Act 1946 be repealed and that Trades Recognition Australia confine its activities to international assessment of overseas qualifications, with the states and territories to take on the domestic trades assessment role.

Secondly, the report examines how Australia’s skills recognition procedures can be improved. As the committee heard during the inquiry, many migrants have been frustrated by a lack of information on skills recognition processes, the gap between migration assessment and employment assessment, the cost of skills assessments and the time taken to complete assessment processes.

The committee was concerned, for example, to hear the account of a physiotherapist who sought overseas skills recognition through the relevant assessment authority. The process took two years, including three attempts at a written exam costing $1,100 each time. In one particular year, 11 out of 76 candidates passed the written exam. When questions from the test were put to some Australian physiotherapists, they admitted that they could not answer many of them. The committee has responded to these concerns with a series of recommendations.

Thirdly, another question facing the committee was how the process of trades recognition and licensing could be fast-tracked without detriment to the skills levels of trades. The ideal situation would be for skilled migrants to arrive in Australia job ready and able to enter the workforce in particular occupations without further delay and for there to be a uniform licensing system across Australia. As already discussed, the committee therefore supports recent COAG initiatives in this area.

The committee also had serious concerns about the performance of Trades Recognition Australia—or TRA, as it is known. This was a strong theme in evidence to the inquiry with comments about the lengthy processing times, closure of TRA state offices in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Tasmania and restricted telephone contact hours. Inconsistencies in assessment outcomes were also raised. It is to be said that TRA did lift its game part way through the inquiry in response to the committee’s scrutiny. The committee hopes that TRA continues to improve its performance.

Finally, another issue facing the committee was what can be done to make sure that the qualifications of overseas trained doctors are properly assessed. The Australian Medical Council’s comments to the committee about overseas trained doctors were of great concern. Mr Speaker, as I am out of time and it is relevant to the report, I seek leave to table the remainder of my speech.

Leave granted.

Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to commend the recommendations of the committee to the government as sensible, moderate and affordable, and I hope that they do not meet the same fate as some previous inquiries’ recommendations. One of the things that comes out of the committee and demands further investigation is the abuse of 457 visas. I draw attention to this problem because of the government’s apparent refusal to refer the 457 visa scheme to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee for investigation and because of recent reports of further abuses of the 457 visa. I think it is vital that all aspects of the temporary skilled migration process come to light in way one or another.

The impact of 457s on the Australian community has been hotly debated, and rightly so, but the debate usually centres on the use of temporary labour to drive down wages—the gazetted pay rate for temporary skilled workers is often below the market rate, as we have heard—and on the existence of an experienced temporary workforce that could reduce the incentive to train Australians. These are very important issues and deserve the attention of this parliament.

But what has received little coverage or debate is the plight of the foreign workers themselves and the kind of behaviour that Australian employers are engaging in towards their non-Australian employees. The first thing that should be noted is that, while the Howard government has talked up the importance of migrants learning English for assimilation purposes, there is no requirement for workers coming into Australia under the 457 visa scheme to have any functional let alone vocational English—and that certainly came to light in the committee’s investigations. DIMA, indeed, was unable to tell our committee how the possession of adequate English language skills for 457 visa applicants and others was assessed. As a consequence, the committee recommended that a minimum standard of vocational English should be required and that DIMA be required to specify precisely how language proficiency is to be assessed and subject such processes to independent evaluation.

I think all of us in this parliament are aware of recent reports of a construction site where none of the Chinese workers could speak English, read safety signs or follow emergency procedures. This is surely alarming, particularly for the workers themselves. The fact that many temporary workers have no English raises the issue of whether they understand their rights and their employer’s obligations—and, indeed, whether they are open to being exploited.

A case has come to my attention of a Korean family living in my electorate who were induced into coming to Australia by their prospective employer promising them permanent residency—as many of them are. On arrival, the husband was paid much less than originally promised and was frightened into silent compliance by a fellow countryman being sacked by the same employer after he complained about his working conditions. This family have no English and my office needs to use a translator to communicate with them. They have four children, one of whom is an epileptic and requires constant medical care. Whilst this family understood that it was their responsibility to take out private medical insurance to cover their stay, no-one explained to them that there is a one-year waiting period before they can make a claim. They are now experiencing great difficulty in paying for medication, as the husband’s wages are fixed for the contract period. Neither do they understand how the school system works, at what ages their children can enrol and how to go about enrolling them. They were not eligible for any government sponsored English lessons, and the only way they were getting by was with the assistance of a concerned neighbour. These are serious problems.

The husband, the breadwinner, did not know how to approach his employer to ask about his conditions of employment. He had seen many colleagues scared into submission and was not about to jeopardise the future of his family in order to question his wages and work conditions. The family had sold everything in Korea for the promise of a life in Australia. They live in the hope that they can secure a new sponsor, which is why I am not naming the family at this stage—I do not want to jeopardise their future.

The family were told that if they had to return to Korea they would have to fund their own expenses. While it is the employer’s obligation to ensure that the cost of travel for an employee to return to their home country is met, DIMA has advised my office that there is no way it can actually enforce this obligation. Furthermore, it said that, if the government were forced to pay for these airfares, the employee and not the employer would have a debt to the Commonwealth, which the employee would have to pay if they ever wanted to return to Australia. It is a catch-22 situation.

This raises the issue of whether the government is serious in treating employer noncompliance with visa conditions, including the question of whether the employee can speak English in the first place. All that can happen is that, if a business does not comply with its visa obligations, the department may—and I underline ‘may’—prevent the employer from sponsoring or nominating any other employees, cancel the business sponsorship agreement, cancel the visas of employees and consider any previous noncompliance. But it is my understanding that they can do little to enforce these provisions.

In Western Australia, allegations of breaches of workplace relations laws are referred to the state Department of Consumer and Employment Protection. According to the department, in 2004-05 it investigated 36 allegations that employers failed to pay temporary skilled migrants their full entitlements and found that nearly 78 per cent of the investigated employers were in breach of their obligations to the tune of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. These breaches included employers not having paid appropriate superannuation and giving misleading information on living and working conditions. If these employees had been able to speak or understand English— (Time expired)

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for statements on this report has expired. Does the member for Canning wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a later occasion?

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with sessional order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour this day.