Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will not support the passage of the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. This bill represents the government's response to the longstanding and well-documented problem of the exploitation of temporary migrant workers in Australia. It sits within the broader package of measures first announced in the government's December 2023 Migration Strategy.

The issue of migrant worker exploitation is not new. Successive reviews, audits and parliamentary inquiries have identified troubling behaviour by a minority of employers who have used their position to underpay, coerce or otherwise mistreat vulnerable temporary visa workers. These findings have attracted considerable public attention and, rightly, prompted calls for stronger oversight. The former coalition government consistently condemned these abuses, and it was the coalition government that strengthened civil penalties for sponsor noncompliance, tightened sponsor obligations and supported inquiries aimed at improving protections for migrant workers. The integrity of the skilled visa framework is something the coalition has upheld for many years.

Notwithstanding that this measure seeks to impose additional reporting requirements on employers who, especially in the regions, generate prosperity for Australian and overseas workers alike, visa holders are already able to check whether a prospective employer is properly approved, with the assistance of registered migration agents. We agree with the government's stated goal to deter noncompliance. Accountability can indeed help to expose unscrupulous employers and encourage a culture of compliance, but the coalition believes that the current framework already supports this goal adequately.

While we share the goal of deterring exploitation, serious design flaws compel us to oppose the bill outright. The bill, through its regulation-making power, would allow for publication of the number of sponsored workers at each business. We are concerned, especially given the many recent examples of union thuggery uncovered by investigations into the CFMEU, that publishing headcount information could expose good and proper individual employees and their employers to be targeted in xenophobic campaigns. Our view is that this information is not necessary for the transparency objective of the bill and carries an avoidable risk of misuse. The purpose of the register is to assist workers and authorities to verify lawful sponsorship status, not to create a list that could be used by any activist groups to single out individual employers.

As with any measure that relies upon delegated legislation, the coalition expects the government to publish draft regulations in a timely manner and to ensure that parliament has the opportunity to review what specific data will be included on the register. Clarity and consistency in these regulations will be important.

We also observe that the bill is only one part of the government's wider agenda on migrant worker protections, much of which remains delayed. Commitments regarding criminal sanctions, whistleblower visa protections and repeat offender bans have still not been delivered. The government should be held to account on the broader suite of the reforms it has promised.

There are serious flaws in this legislation, and, accordingly, the coalition will vote against the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my first speech in this place, I was honoured to honour some former immigrants to this country—my family. Members of the Moo family arrived in Australia in the late 1800s, settling in Darwin. Moo Yat Fah worked as a labourer on the construction of the Darwin to Pine Creek railroad, like many other people. Deputy Speaker Scrymgour, I know many people in your electorate have this history as well. Many Australians of Chinese heritage worked on that railroad, and they were a key driver of the economy throughout the Northern Territory. Around the same time, my po po's family, the Lau Gooeys, left China for Melbourne. My po po's father found work there as a slaughterman, helping drive local businesses and the economy in Victoria. It's almost 140 years that my family has been in this country.

This story of migrants is not unique. It is not unique because migrants have been coming to this country for generations. And, when they come, we expect, with our values, to ensure that they are not exploited at work. What we have heard from the member for Mitchell is that the coalition does not want to support legislation whose only purpose is to ensure that migrant workers are not exploited when they go to the workplace.

Immigrant stories are Australian stories. There are Australian stories and immigrant stories linked to our core values of a fair go and mateship. People have been migrating to Australia for work for generations. In the years following the arrival of the English on these shores, migrant groups became synonymous with certain waves of immigration and certain types of work—the Chinese who worked the goldfields; the Afghan cameleers who assisted in the exploration of the outback; the Japanese pearl divers who boosted the development of the pearl industry; and also, shamefully, the South Sea Islanders who were brought to work on sugarcane farms in Queensland. In 1863, the first group of manual labourers arrived. Over the next 40 years, more than 62,000 Pacific island men, women and children were sent to work on those canefields. Some were kidnapped, some were blackbirded and others were misled about the work and conditions. Many were never paid. In fact, nearly 30 per cent of these workers died in Australia due to vulnerability to European illnesses. These people weren't just robbed of their wages; they were robbed of their families, of basic conditions and, in many cases, of their lives. From 1885 to 1901, the Queensland government managed the wages of deceased islanders. Little effort was made to send their wages to their families back home, with the amount misappropriated worth around $40 million today.

I raise this appalling part of our history for two reasons. Firstly, it's to remind ourselves that, while migration is foundational to the Australian story and the development of our multicultural identity, it is also important to acknowledge that in that history are policies, legislation, exploitation and mistreatment that are shameful and deeply regrettable. In this place, we must always acknowledge and not forget such things. I also mention it because the exploitation and mistreatment of migrants is unfortunately not something consigned to past centuries. It is happening now. Unlike the coalition, who, in rejecting this bill, choose to put their heads in the sand, we choose to stand up against it.

Today, it is sadly not uncommon to hear of migrant workers being subjected to deceptive recruitment strategies—bullying, wage theft, excessive and surprise deductions from pay, and substandard working conditions. It wasn't okay when it happened all those decades ago. It isn't okay when it's happening now. It will not be okay. This legislation is trying to stop it.

The United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery describes the main issue as:

… a significant power imbalance between employers and workers, since employees are either tied to a single employer, and mobility is reported to be extremely difficult, and/or dependent on their employer for extension of contracts or nomination for permanent residency.

This is why the Albanese Labor government has introduced the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025.

In December 2023, the Albanese Labor government released a migration strategy, a modern, purpose built framework for managing migration that includes temporary visa skilled pathways. This strategy is central to the government's pledge to repair the current migration system and ensure that it delivers better outcomes for migrants, the Australian economy and the wider community. The migration strategy was shaped through extensive engagement with business, unions and other stakeholders, drawing on more than 450 submissions received during the review of the migration system. It introduces reforms focused on temporary skilled migration to meet workforce needs and enhance worker mobility.

The strategy builds on the findings of a thorough, independent review of Australia's migration system, spearheaded by the former Minister for Home Affairs in September 2022 and led by three independent experts. As part of this process, the reviewers released a discussion paper and considered 483 written submissions, including many from individual migrants and visa applicants, the people in our community who are affected every day. They also held numerous roundtable consultations with peak bodies, unions and senior officials from state and territory governments. The final report of the Review of the Migration System was delivered in March 2023, and this bill meets a very key commitment of that strategy. It implements measures which will increase protections for temporary skilled migrant workers in Australia.

The central provision in this legislation is the creation of a comprehensive public register of approved work sponsors. In Australia it is necessary for an employer to be approved by the Department of Home Affairs before sponsoring the visa of a skilled worker. Under this legislation, these employers will be listed on a public register and the register will be limited to temporary visas where full sponsor obligations apply. The register will sit alongside the public register of approved sponsors which is published by the Australian Border Force.

The register will be hosted on the Department of Home Affairs website and will list key details about approved sponsors. These include the sponsor's name, the category or type of approval granted, their ABN and the postcode linked to that ABN. It will also state the number of workers they sponsor and the specific occupations of those workers.

By making this information publicly accessible, the register aims to strengthen transparency, improve accountability and support effective monitoring and oversight within the sponsorship system. This is about making sure that employers are held accountable and that there are pathways for migrant workers to ensure they are not exploited under a system that allows them to be. This is about closing that gap and making sure that, if you come to this country to work, then you can be entitled to, can expect to and deserve to be treated fairly in your workplace. It doesn't matter what the colour of your skin is, what language you speak or what faith you have, everyone deserves to be treated fairly in their workplace. Stamping out exploitation is part of who we are as a government and who we are as the Labor Party.

In addition to promoting openness, the register will serve as a practical tool to help address the exploitation of temporary skilled migrant workers. The addition of the postcode will assist migrant workers who are keen to move to a new location to find reputable employers. It will enable workers to identify and connect with alternative sponsors if needed and provide a reliable resource for verifying that a sponsoring employer is legitimate and compliant with regulatory requirements. Coming from another country to Australia to start work—coming here to deliver work for our economy—is a scary thing to do, and you need tools to make sure that you have a pathway that does not lead to exploitative workplace practices.

Disclosure of information on the register will be consistent with the Privacy Act. The register upholds the privacy of the sponsors by alerting them to the requirement during the process of sponsorship application. The register only provides information that is readily and publicly available, such as their ABN. The register will not include any identifying information relating to the nominated workers.

The measures in this bill were previously included in the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Sponsorship and Nomination Processes) Bill 2024, which lapsed before this year's election. The bill before us today does not include provisions that were included in the 2024 bill—these are the streamlining of labour market testing and the indexation of income thresholds. In December 2023, the government undertook initial work to streamline labour market testing. The number of advertisements required to reduce from three to two, removing the need to advertise on the Workforce Australia website. Any future changes to labour market testing will be considered by the government Similarly, in December 2024, the Department of Home Affairs revised the regulations to establish the income thresholds and their annual indexation for the 'skills in demand' visa. As a result, thresholds are automatically adjusted each year on 1 July and in accordance with changes to the average weekly ordinary time earnings.

This bill builds on the Albanese Labor government's commitment to reform and strengthen the temporary skilled migration system. These amendments to the Migration Act will foster trust in the system, protect vulnerable workers and ensure that sponsorship arrangements operate fairly and ethically.

In the first part of my speech, I dwelled on one of the dark episodes from our past. I want to stress, however, the positive experiences many migrants coming to these shores have had—not only the positive experiences that those migrants have had, but the positive impact that they have had on us as a country, the positive impact that they have had on our economy, the positive impact that they have had on our culture, the positive impact that they have had on our communities and the positive impact that they have had on us as a society. As we in this place know, Australia is a multicultural success story. It is built, in so many ways, on the hard work, the labours, efforts and input of people with migrant backgrounds.

I also want to focus on the essential role that migrants have played and continue to play in shaping Australia's success and in shaping our future. This has been the case for generations, like my family, and it will continue to be. You only have to look at the members of the Labor caucus to see the result of migration. You only have to look at people on this side of the chamber and their stories to know that we are a party that is proud of diversity and representation and a caucus that looks like the people in our community.

The contributions of migrants extend far beyond economic prosperity. They enrich our communities, strengthen our national identity and deepen our connections with countries across the depth and breadth of the globe. Migration brings that diversity, innovation and cultural exchange—all of which make Australia stronger and more vibrant. The Albanese Labor government firmly believes that every migrant has right to live safely and with a sense of security. It is our responsibility to hold up those rights, and this bill helps us to do that. We are that migration success story, but what we have seen of late, in that rich tapestry of migration that makes us stronger as a country, is people pulling at the threads of it, and we must always stand against that. This bill makes sure that migrant workers have protection and that we have their back. (Time expired)

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak about the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. As the member for Mallee and the shadow minister for regional development, I emphasise how agriculture—particularly horticulture in Mallee—relies on migrant workers. Workforce shortages are a fact of life in regional Australia, and Mallee is no exception. Businesses in Sunraysia—in Mildura, Robinvale and Swan Hill—and even further south in the Wimmera, in Horsham and beyond, need migrant workers, especially during seasonal peaks in workload. Without these migrant workers, our region would not be the productive powerhouse that it is. Speaking of which, tonight, at the Australian Export Awards, Select Harvests from Wemen are up for the Regional Exporter award for 2025. They are a finalist, and I will be there cheering them on. They are a local success story, with a $116 million turnaround last year and record sales—the best almond prices they have ever received.

I come to this debate familiar with the migration portfolio area, having been the Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration in the 47th Parliament. I worked closely, in a healthy and bipartisan way, with the then-chair and now retired Labor member for Calwell, Maria Vamvakinou. I was proud to take the migration committee for a public hearing in Robinvale, in my electorate, in May 2023 to contribute to the committee's report, Migration, pathway to nation building. We met with the council for the Robinvale area, the Swan Hill Rural City Council, and with horticultural businesses and associations.

Key themes we heard in that hearing were the following. Workforce shortages were structural, not temporary, and regional industries—including agriculture, horticulture, food processing, health, aged care, transport and hospitality—were facing acute labour shortages. Employers consistently reported they could not fill roles locally, even after advertising widely. Labour shortages were a constraint on business viability, productivity and regional economic growth. In many regions, migration wasn't optional but essential. Regional communities were increasingly reliant on migrant labour to sustain essential industries. Witnesses emphasised that many sectors could not operate without migrant workers. Migrants were not only filling low skilled seasonal jobs; they were also filling critical skilled roles as nurses, doctors, mechanics, food processing specialists and farm supervisors. The migration system was not well designed for regional labour realities. Employers described the system as slow, complex, costly and highly bureaucratic. Small and regional businesses were especially disadvantaged compared to large city employers. Existing safeguards were failing too many workers. Attraction without retention is a revolving door, and reform should prioritise transparency, fairness, regional needs and long-term settlement.

Key findings of the 2024 report of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration,Migration, pathway to nation building, showed that migration is a nation-building tool that needs a long-term, long-range strategy, not a piecemeal policy. Migration should strengthen Australia's skills base and economic capacity. Migration policy must help sustain regional population and workforce needs. The current system is too complex, slow and difficult to navigate. Temporary migration should feed into stable and permanent nation-building outcomes. A fair system must protect vulnerable workers while maintaining integrity. Migration success depends on integration, not just arrival. Policy should be grounded in measurable outcomes and future workforce planning.

There are other issues across Mallee related to the migrant workforce. I note that the United Workers Union, the UWU, has a vested interest in trying to recruit migrant workers. There are stories of the UWU travelling to neighbouring Pacific countries and hauling people in to their unions before they even arrive in the country. The ABS has an inability to devise a way to count the seasonal workforce and the population of visa overstayers in the census in Robinvale. This results in a significant underestimation of the demands on local services and infrastructure and makes local planning and obtaining adequate funding incredibly difficult.

The background to that story is that, in the ABS, Robinvale has a population of around 4,000. In real terms, through other research, we know that the population is around 11,000. That creates a phenomenal problem, in terms of the health workforce, health workforce needs and health needs generally—health services. It also creates a problem in terms of education. You can imagine that the infrastructure demands on that small community are extremely stretched because the workforce population is not counted. I know of one school in Robinvale where, when I went to visit them—this is a couple of years ago now—I asked what percentage of the students were from undocumented workers. They said that it was 25 per cent of the school. That's a problem in terms of meeting the needs of the students, the parents and the community itself.

Across Mallee, and particularly in Sunraysia, there is an issue with some labour hire operators. It's fair to say that this bill will, if passed, provide the data to enable states and territories, who are responsible for regulating labour hire companies, to pick up bad and exploitative behaviour by rogue labour hire companies. Under this bill, labour hire companies will be the published sponsors. However, the limits of federal jurisdiction might come into play if there are labour hire subcontractors that actually contract out the workers. This is not to say that every labour hire contracting company is bad. I know of some excellent ones who, phenomenally, have a data platform, a technological platform, where workers can be matched so that farmers know that the person who is standing in front of them is actually the person who has the correct visa and that it is appropriate for them to be on that farm. I personally think investment should be made into these kinds of features—using our technology wisely.

Let me explain why we as the coalition have problems with this bill and currently stand to oppose it. This bill fulfils the government's December 2023 pledge to improve transparency of approved sponsors, although it arrives nearly two years after the announcement. Time and again, we tend to grapple with whether the net is being cast so wide as to create red tape and disincentive for law-abiding people while trying to catch a particular undesirable species in the ecosystem. We do not want to deter small businesses from sponsoring for fear of their activities being disclosed on the register and therefore becoming targets. There are surely more bespoke, smarter ways to sort the wheat from the chaff. This is where the government would do well to publish draft regulations promptly and commit to disallowable legislative instruments in this space. There might be scope for regulation to target the real problems in this sector and not put the good apples in with the bad.

The coalition is concerned about a number of holders of temporary visas that might be disclosed as sponsored by a particular employer. We have little information to tell us that the additional disclosure here will, within the Commonwealth's sphere of power, offer much by way of additional protection for migrant workers. Having said that, we acknowledge this legislation is intended to respond to well documented instances of wage theft and coercion in parts of the temporary skilled visa program. Again, I would state that this is not across the board.

The coalition has long insisted on integrity and employer sponsorship of migrants. However, we believe this bill goes too far. The Department of Home Affairs already has robust monitoring and compliance measures in place and extensive information about sponsors' businesses. We are not yet convinced that this extra step is actually necessary. We need assurances that the Department of Home Affairs will maintain an efficient error-correction process to protect reputable firms. The register is only one element of an antiexploitation agenda. Stronger enforcement powers and whistleblower visa arrangements remain undelivered. We need an entire ecosystem change. But we in the Nationals know from regional Australia that, under Labor, farmers are increasingly demonised and talked about as rogue businesspeople. Whether it is the insinuation they exploit workers or the claim that their opposition to the renewables rollout is insincere and farmers are obstacles in the way, Labor is trying to divide city and country people like never before.

Three times a day, Australians should thank a farmer for the food on their table if not also the shirt on their back. We see in this portfolio, energy and other portfolios a mentality that farmers are the enemy when they are the absolute foundation of our food security and our nation. That's one reason why I'm open-minded to how we ensure bills like this one adequately target the rogue elements like rogue labour-hire companies who bring industries into disrepute.

In closing, it is clear that the challenges facing regional Australia are real and immediate. In electorates like mine, industries such as agriculture, horticulture, food processing, health, aged care, transport and hospitality are battling chronic workforce shortages that are structural, not seasonal or fleeting. Employers have told us time and time again that even after exhausting recruitment efforts they simply cannot secure the workers they need. Migrant labour is not an optional extra for regions like Mallee. It is fundamental to our productivity, economic strength and the continued viability of the communities that feed our nation and the world.

The Joint Standing Committee on Migration's work in the 47th Parliament underscored the current migration system is not fit for purpose when it comes to regional realities. It is slow, complex and costly, particular for smaller employers who lack the resources of large metropolitan businesses. At the same time, some migrant workers remain vulnerable to exploitation, with insufficient flexibility and pathways to permanency. Our nation-building migration system must do better. It must strengthen Australia's skills base, support population sustainability in the regions, protect vulnerable workers and prioritise long-term settlement and integration, not just temporary arrivals. Migration policy should be strategic, coordinated and grounded in workforce planning, not piecemeal.

Against that backdrop, the coalition cannot support this bill. While we are steadfast in our commitment to integrity and employer sponsorship, and acknowledge the need to combat wage theft and coercion, the government has failed to justify the public disclosure measures proposed here—particularly the publication of employer-level data on temporary visa numbers. Such disclosure risks exposing compliant employers to pressure and intimidation while offering little additional protection to workers beyond what existing monitoring powers already provide. Too much is left to regulation with no clarity on the safeguards or correction processes that reputable firms deserve.

If the government is serious about protecting migrant workers, it should focus on delivering the stronger enforcement powers and whistleblower protections it has promised rather than imposing unnecessary and unproven public reporting requirements. For these reasons, the coalition opposes this bill.

Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. I do so as not only the federal member for Barton but also someone whose professional life before entering parliament was spent, for a lot of the time, in the space of employment law. For over a decade, I represented workers who were underpaid, mistreated, threatened or simply too scared to speak up. I saw firsthand how vulnerable temporary migrant workers can be and how quickly hope turns into fear when safeguards fail or when devious employers—and I must say, only a few—see vulnerability as an invitation.

I heard some comments from the member for Mallee tonight, particularly around bold assertions regarding the United Workers Union. I must say, the United Workers Union does important work to support migrant workers here in this country, because the reality is that migrant exploitation happens in Australia. It happens in our cities, suburbs and regions. It happens in our restaurants, construction sites, food processing plants, farms, cleaning companies, care sectors and gig work. It often involves workers who are here legally and are doing the right thing, yet are taken advantage of by someone who believes that they will never speak out.

This is a serious issue. It's a moral issue, it's an issue of economic fairness and it's an issue of national character, because any system that depends on silence or fear is a system that fails not only migrant workers but every worker. Moreover, the bill aligns with this government's commitment to promoting Australia as a destination for highly skilled migrants. We need smart, qualified people to meet the skills shortage in our economy and boost productivity. Those people are going to work in Australia only if they can be guaranteed safe, secure work. The bill before us today is a practical, targeted and integrity-focused reform that strengthens protections for temporary skilled migrants. It creates a public register of approved work sponsors, increases transparency and allows migrant workers to verify the legitimacy of employers and seek new sponsorship opportunities without fear. These are not abstract administrative changes; they are protections that can change the trajectory of real lives.

To understand the importance of this bill we need to be honest about the dynamics of power in workplaces. Workers who are on temporary visas often depend entirely on their sponsoring employer for their right to remain in Australia. This creates an enormous imbalance. When a worker fears losing their visa, every unreasonable demand begins to feel like something they must tolerate—longer hours, underpayments, threats, unsafe workplaces and even intimidation. As an employment lawyer I sat with workers who carried this fear silently. They did not want to cause trouble. They wanted to fit in and contribute. They simply wanted a chance to build a better life. But the lack of transparency in the sponsorship system meant that many did not know their rights or their options. Some did not even know whether their employer was legitimately registered.

This bill directly addresses these issues. At its core, the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025 establishes the authority for the Department of Home Affairs to publish and maintain a public register of approved work sponsors. The register will include the name of the approved sponsor, the approved sponsor's Australian Business Number, the postcode linked to the ABN, the number of sponsored workers and the occupations associated with those sponsorships. This is not simply an administrative database; it's a tool for transparency. It will give temporary skilled migrant workers the ability to check the legitimacy of their sponsoring employer. It will help them identify new sponsors if they wish to change jobs. It will give regulators and the public greater oversight of the system. And it will increase accountability for employers who participate in skilled migration.

Many temporary migrant workers I met in my time as an employment lawyer described the same underlying problem: they did not feel they had any safe or realistic avenue to challenge the wrongdoing. Even when they knew they were being underpaid or threatened, the fear of visa cancellation or the loss of their job kept them silent. In practice, this meant that the sponsorship system, designed to bring skills into Australia, too often became a mechanism that tied workers to exploitation. The lack of visibility in the system made this worse. Workers relied almost entirely on whatever information the employer chose to provide. Many did not know whether their sponsor was compliant. Some did not know they were allowed to change sponsors. Others were misled into believing that reporting exploitation would automatically result in their removal from the country. When a worker's entire future rests on a single employer, misinformation becomes a powerful tool of control. Greater transparency disrupts that dynamic. A public register gives workers a clear line of sight to their rights and options. It gives them the confidence to seek support, the freedom to move to another legitimate sponsor and the ability to plan their lives with security rather than in fear.

This measure also supports small and medium businesses that do the right thing. Many small-business owners in my community want a fair and transparent system. They want to hire skilled workers from overseas to fill shortages and grow their business, but they also want confidence that competitors who cut corners cannot get ahead by exploiting workers.

This bill helps create the level playing field that we need. It complements the work we have already done through the Migration Strategy released in December 2023, including the development of the new Skills in Demand visa. That strategy was grounded in significant consultation with unions, employers, migrant communities and experts. It recognised the need for better integrity measures, greater worker protections and a migration system that supports productivity and fairness.

These reforms were previously part of the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Sponsorship and Nomination Processes) Bill 2024, which lapsed when parliament ended before the election. The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee noted that most submissions supported the measures, and the committee recommended that the bill pass the Senate. The government's response to that report was tabled on 20 October 2025. We are now moving forward with these important amendments again. If this bill passes, the register will be implemented either on a fixed date by proclamation or six months after the act receives royal assent. This window allows time for regulations, technical development, stakeholder engagement and functionality to be built in the department's website. This is necessary for proper implementation.

It is worth exploring one simple question: why do we need this bill? The answer's very straightforward. We need these protections because exploitation continues to exist—and we've heard from some of the speakers across the chamber who agree with this—because transparency combats exploitation and because good employers should not be undercut by bad ones. If we do not pass this bill, the rollout of the public register will be delayed and so will these integrity measures. Workers will remain less protected, genuine employers will have fewer tools for transparency and the system will remain more vulnerable to misuse.

The register will not include any identifying information about individual workers. Privacy will be fully protected. It will only reflect publicly available information about employers. Approved sponsors will be informed at the time of application that their information will appear on the register, consistent with existing obligations under the Privacy Act.

Barton is one of the most multicultural electorates in the country. People from more than 70 cultural backgrounds call it home. Many local families arrived in this country as migrants or refugees. Many worked incredibly hard in jobs where English was not their first language, conditions were difficult and exploitation was always a risk. My own family made that journey. I grew up witnessing the strength, resilience and sacrifice that defines migrant communities.

When we talk about this bill, we are not talking about a conceptual policy. We're talking about people—people like the workers who came to me when I was a lawyer because they had been underpaid by $10 an hour for a night work shift, people like the woman whose employer confiscated her passport to stop her from leaving and people like the young tradesperson who was threatened with deportation if he refused unpaid overtime. These experiences stay with people for years. They shape their view of this country, and they shape how safe they feel in their workplace, in their community and in their new home. We owe it to them to get it right. Australia's reputation as a safe and fair place to work should never depend on luck or on the goodwill of the employer. It must be built into the system itself. It must be grounded in transparency and oversight.

Now cue all the trolls and the bots on socials. Here they come, rushing to comment on how we're importing voters, how the colour of my skin must mean I'm a part of some big greater conspiracy and how this bill is going to ruin Australia as we know it. Newsflash—'Australia as we know it' is multicultural! Those people who are lucky enough to be permitted to work here must learn the importance of our employment law system. We can only teach them such rights and values if they are entitled to them in the first place, and we can only hope to build the homes and staff the hospitals that our country needs through skilled migration. Anyone who denies this fact is dreaming.

This bill is not the end of the work; it forms part of a broader reform agenda. For example, while this bill does not include labour market testing reforms, the government has already streamlined those requirements by reducing advertisement obligations and removing unnecessary administrative burdens while maintaining strong local worker protections. Similarly income thresholds and the indexation for the skills and demand visa are already set through regulatory changes made in December 2024. They now automatically adjust each year on 1 July in line with the average or weekly ordinary time earnings. This ensures the system remains fair, competitive and aligned with economic realities.

This bill is a pragmatic, responsible and much-needed measure. It enhances protections for temporary skilled migrant workers, it promotes transparency, it strengthens system integrity, and it supports the many employers who do the right thing. As a member of this parliament, as someone who has worked in employment law and as someone who represents one of the most diverse electorates in the country, I know how important this reform is. I know how much it matters to local families, to new arrivals, to workers who want a fair chance and to employers who want a trusted system.

Migration has shaped the story of Australia for generations but so has fairness. We are a nation that prides itself on giving everyone a fair go. This bill helps ensure that those values remain central to our migration system and that temporary skilled workers are not left behind. It gives them tools to protect themselves, to move safely and to build their lives without fear. This bill strengthens our migration system by prioritising integrity, transparency and dignity. It is a step forward to a fairer and more accountable system, it is a step forward to reducing exploitation, and it is a step forward honouring the values of equality and respect that every Australian deserves, regardless of where they were born.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I concur with some of the remarks and disagree slightly with others that have been made. A large section of this revolves around the insertion into the Migration Act of section 140GD by the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill. One of the issues there is that it comes with an assumption that all could be bad when all is not.

There are times where—I've worked as an accountant in areas of labour hire—you have to call people to account and say, 'I do not believe that you have a person working for you called Jim Bean, nor do I believe you have a person working for you called Johnnie Walker or Evel Knievel.' Yes, of course, this has to be dealt with because, especially in some areas, it becomes a vessel for a collection of people who are basically absconding from oversight and being exploited by people who can make money out of them. Okay—go out, catch the criminal and do what you've got to do. But don't presume everybody is a criminal. That's one of the things that is happening too much. We use a virtuous message—'We've got to catch those who are breaking the law'—but we cast a net that impinges on every person's right as if they were criminals, and they're not.

We are losing more and more in this nation—the right to be anonymous when you have done nothing wrong. It's no good to say, 'If you're doing nothing wrong, you don't have anything to worry about.' I just don't want to be watched all the time. I just don't want the government watching me all the time. Part of my freedom as an Australian is for people to have the presumption that I'm doing the right thing. I don't need observation. This is another exercise—in the inclusion of section 104GD—where we get the government saying, 'It's just to catch the baddies.' Well, everything these days apparently is 'just to catch the baddies'.

On an issue that has been brought up a number of times that, when we use the word 'multicultural'—every person in this building can connect themselves somewhere to an immigrant. Unless you're basically 100 per cent of Indigenous heritage—'Aboriginal' they call themselves in my area—then you've got, somewhere, an immigrant. I would say the vast majority of Aboriginal people are part immigrant. My father was an immigrant, and obviously, if you go back—the first person came to this country is on the memorial outside St Mary's Cathedral. Her name is on the glass. She was an orphan from Ireland. Her parents starved to death in a hedge. They could both read and write. We all have a connection somewhere to an immigrant past. It's just that the timeframe changes. But I call into question people who say 'multicultural'. We have multilingual, multiethnicity, multiracial and multifaith, but be careful, when you start saying multicultural, that that is a statement that implies absolute virtue and can never be argued against. I can assure you there are some cultures that are not virtuous. There are some practices, even in Indigenous culture, that, if you brought them in today, you would find abhorrent. Virtue does not revolve around the fact that, because you can use the word 'multicultural', all things can be applied.

It's a ridiculous example, but I'll give it nonetheless. The Incas had a culture. It's not without a shadow of a doubt that they had a culture—a very, very defined culture. It involved the beheading of people and pulling out their heart to appease the sun. That's a culture, but we're not going to start saying, 'That's a culture, therefore I can condone it, and therefore there's a space in Australia for it.' That's ridiculous. There has to be a temperance in this. There has to be an understanding that you've got to be part of a wider body of Australians. In doing so, there are certain things you've got to remove from that cultural identity. I think all of us, if we went back into our DNA and into our heritage, would find things that are most definitely part of our historical ethnic culture that are completely and utterly unapplicable to Australia today, and you just have to let that section go. If you don't then unfortunately you deliver Australia to a form of friction, a form of heat, and you create problems for our nation.

I'll give you a classic one from mine. Like most of us, I've got a vast tapestry of people that make up my history. It goes all the way to Gypsies in one section. They're from everywhere. But let's go to the Irish section. Ireland at a certain point in time had two different, very strong cultures, and they didn't get along. They really didn't. It took a long time, even in the seat of New England, for those cultures to reconcile with one another. If you said that both those cultures could live by their initial creed, you'll go right back to where we were. We're talking about people who look the same and talk the same. It's just that they pathologically hated each other. We don't want to revisit that. They both had their cultures. There was Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose, in a way, I grew up at the tail end of it. It was toxic, completely toxic. I don't want it. One of the big things for me is growing up and saying: 'Let's cut that loose. Let's let that go.' I'm not interested in someone's interests in the IRA. I really am not. I don't want to have anything to do with it. That's why I say you've got to temper it. Don't just say that multiculturalism is the absolute good. No. You've got to be a little more discerning than that.

In a place like Tamworth, this is very evident. Even in Tamworth, we are growing flat out. The latest subdivision is seeing 5,000 new houses going in. That's about 12,000 or 13,000 people. The makeup of Tamworth is so dramatically different, and I revel in it—it's good. It's dramatically different to what it would have been even 10 years ago. I'm not a good but a practising Catholic. When I go to mass on Sunday at St Nick's, it's the Indian community that go. And it's huge. They're all there. They use that as a mechanism to then go out and have a meal. That's all good. That's great. In other parts of Tamworth, it's the Filipino community. Then there are Nigerians. Overwhelmingly, it's great. It's all good. These people have been essential for the economic growth of Tamworth—absolutely essential.

There are so many jobs—I hate to break it into the Australian culture—which Australians just don't want to do. Especially around certain areas and in abattoirs, you just cannot get people who will see a day through. It's the reality that good people who work are at work, and people who don't want to work—in some instances, it's because they are, wait for it, lazy. They don't want to work. You can bring people onto a shift, and they literally don't make it to smoko, to 9 o'clock. They just can't handle it; they're gone. But people come in from the Philippines, and they're—bang—focused all the way through and doing it with a smile on their face. It's the same with boilermaking and fitting and turning. As I said, the locals who want to work are working. Often, they're in higher management positions because they start at the bottom and fly through.

In our area, they would be terrified. If you said: 'We're not going to have any more Filipinos come in. We're not going to have any more Pacific Islanders come in. We're not going to have any more backpackers come in,' they would lose their minds. They would get very, very angry with me. I would say that they would have big meetings about how they could get rid of me. Genuinely, there's no form of racism about any of this; it's a clear understanding that what you deliver to the nation is important.

When we have citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, I always say to people that there's a contractual obligation in getting citizenship of this nation. It's the greatest gift you will ever have, to become a citizen and come to Australia. It is incredible. You have won the lottery if you get to Australia, but it comes with a contract. You have to understand that the focus of people will be more intent on you than it might be on others. So you have an obligation to your kin—to your family, your brothers and sisters—that you never end up in the crime pages, that you are not unemployed and that you are seen as an asset to the nation, not an encumbrance. No-one ever has a problem with that. That seems to make abundant sense. That is also part, we hope, of the Australian culture itself, which is egalitarian and gives people a fair go but also says: 'You have got to contribute back to the nation. You cannot be an encumbrance. You cannot bludge off other people. You have to put your shoulder to the wheel, otherwise other people have to work harder for more of their lives to cover the cost for you, and that is not fair on others.'

I want to go to one area we really need to focus on, and it's something that's close to my heart. It's people who come into Australia and end up—by reason of organised crime—in prostitution. It's the most insidious, evil thing, where young ladies come in on the premise that they've got another job—as a cook, a whole range of things—and they end up in prostitution. The people who have oversight over that are some of the baddest individuals you will ever unfortunately come across. This is still going on. It is still present.

If you go down to Sydney, you don't need to have much curiosity to be able to find where they are. You can have a look at some of the sites, ask yourself some questions, maybe turn up and say: 'Is this person really a masseur? Did this person actually know what they were getting in for when came to Australia?' That's an area we really should be focusing on. What worries me about this, in this section 140GD, is that, so many times, there are things that are self-evident, and you say, 'Surely you understand that, without too much effort, you could find those people and arrest them and do something about them.' Well, why don't we?

It's like, in a way, the illegal tobacco shops. You see people going in, going out and buying illegal tobacco. Everyone talks about it. Then they come up with the idea that, to deal with illegal tobacco, they will say to the people who might own the premises—who had been told their tenants were going to rent it out for a shop but are now selling illegal tobacco and are also in organised crime—that they're going to fine the owner of the premises, not the participant in the building. This is where you say, 'I think you've got this mixed up.' On this one here, the balance is not quite right. I believe that, if there was further work done on this, it would have the capacity to get through. I think on some issues it just ignores other problems that are screaming at you in your face. Other people know about them or talked about them, but no-one wants to do anything about them.

Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025, put forward by the Minister for Home Affairs, and I commend him for doing so. I'm not sure about the member for New England's frankly confusing and somewhat offensive comments before me. He, like his party, wants to continue creating friction and heat in multicultural communities across our nation. But I am honoured to follow my friend the amazing member for Barton and commend her for her dedication to protecting the rights of migrants through her work as an employment lawyer and every day in her role in this parliament.

At its core, this amendment bill is about the value that migrants bring to our nation—a nation shaped by generations of migrants who came to Australia in search of opportunity and a better future. From the Sydney Opera House to the West Gate Bridge, the very bridge that connects my community in Melbourne's western suburbs to the city, it's migrants that built the Australia we all enjoy today. The contributions migrants have made to this country have often come with great sacrifice. For too long, migrating to Australia to work has meant low wages, few protections and an uncertain future. In a country where, apart from our First Nations brothers and sisters, we all have migrant ancestry, where even today almost half of us have a parent born overseas, the fact that migrant workers have not been adequately protected and have been subjected to exploitation, coercion and wage theft is shameful.

Our government does not tolerate the exploitation of migrant workers. I'm a proud member of the Transport Workers' Union and I'm thrilled to say that, after years of campaigning, the TWU, supported by legislation passed by our government last term, has struck a deal with Uber Eats and DoorDash. These companies will provide workers with minimum pay rates, injury insurance and protection against unfair dismissal by algorithms. Migrants make a huge contribution to the gig economy. This work supports them while they study and train and allows them to work and make a living while adjusting to a new home. They deserve to be properly protected in this work, and our government is determined to support them in this.

The amendment bill before us now is another piece in this broader project to support migrant workers. It delivers on a commitment we made in the Migration strategy:getting migration working for the nation, from 2023, to enhance protections and oversight for these workers. The bill will establish a public register of approved work sponsors, which will be publicly available on the Department of Home Affairs website. The register will include the name and type of approved sponsor, the sponsor's ABN, the postcode associated with the approved sponsor's ABN and the number of sponsored workers and their occupations. The inclusion of the employer's postcode in particular will enable migrant workers considering changing sponsors to identify employers nearby, ensuring that the register is fit for use. With this register, it will be easier for migrant workers to check whether a sponsoring employer is legitimate and to find a new sponsor when exploring alternative employment opportunities, giving them the resources they need to be better informed about potential employers as well as greater mobility should they need to find a new employer. It's a simple reform that will make a big difference to the power imbalance between migrant workers and their employers.

Too many temporary migrant workers who provide much-needed skills and labour to Australian businesses find themselves underpaid and subjected to poor conditions. In 2023, the Grattan Institute reported that one in six migrant workers were paid less than the national minimum wage and many endure unsafe working conditions and harassment. In 2016, the ABC reported that 7-Eleven workers were being paid as little as 47c an hour. They were made to work more than twice the number of hours permitted by their visa conditions, and they were physical intimidated when seeking repayment.

Since then, the exploitation of migrant workers hasn't stopped. In December last year, the Fair Work Ombudsman found that workers at a sushi franchise had been underpaid more than $650,000. The franchise was ordered to pay more than $15 million—the highest penalty ever secured by the Fair Work Ombudsman in a single legal action. Most of the workers who were underpaid were working holiday-makers and skilled visa holders, and many of them were young people aged under 25. Migrant workers put up with these conditions because they are afraid of jeopardising their visas, because they haven't been told what their rights are, because they don't know what to do when they are underpaid, because they don't know how to check if their employer is legitimate and, sometimes, because they are being threatened by employers. It isn't fair and it isn't right, and that's why our government won't let it stand.

When we came to government we took decisive action to start eradicating this exploitation. In 2023, we introduced a package of measures targeting employers seeking to exploit migrant workers and ensuring workers could speak up without fear of reprisal. These measures made it a criminal offence to use a person's visa conditions or status to exploit them in the workplace. Because of these measures, dodgy employers can now get up to two years of jail time for this conduct. We also introduced prohibition notices, increased penalties and new compliance tools to deter and punish this conduct by employers, and we repealed section 235 of the Migration Act which made it harder for temporary workers to report exploitation. To ensure these laws have real power, we committed $50 million to the Australian Border Force for enforcement and to promote compliance with these regulations, and we carried out a month-long blitz, inspecting around 300 businesses to check compliance. That was on top of the 140 businesses we sanctioned for bad conduct in 2022.

In 2024, we brought in the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Act, which introduced three new work related offences addressing coercive practices used by employers to exploit migrant workers. In March this year, we launched a $13.25 million grant program to educate temporary visa holders and their employers about our reforms. This piece builds on the systemic changes we've already made in this space, making sure that migrant workers have the right information to make informed choices about their sponsors and can find a new sponsoring employer more easily, reducing their susceptibility to exploitation.

This issue is not so far from my electorate of Gorton. Not long ago, a constituent of my electorate came into my office distressed at the refusal of her application for an Employer Nomination Scheme visa. She had been an employee at her place of work, a small business, for several years already, but her visa application had been refused twice because her employer had failed to pay her at the same rate an Australian worker would be paid for the same work and had abrogated their sponsorship obligations to other workers. This constituent was distressed at being left with no choice but to leave the country despite having done nothing but work hard and support this small business during her time in Australia. These are the challenges faced by temporary workers of our country—temporary workers who have been left at the mercy of their employers, who've had little control over their lives and who've had no choice but to bear the consequences of their employer's indiscretions.

At its core, making sure that temporary migrants are protected from exploitation is a matter of fairness and human dignity, because everybody should be paid properly for the work they do, and nobody should have to endure mistreatment, coercion or exploitation. It's also about making sure that wages stay strong for all Australians. Wage theft is fundamentally anticompetitive—a race to the bottom. When migrant workers are underpaid, it drives wages and conditions down for everyone. It erodes institutions that make Australia a good place to live and work, like our world-leading minimum wage, and it harms employers doing the right thing. It means that employers are faced with a difficult choice—whether to pay their workers the lawful amount and sacrifice market share or join the race to the bottom. By making sure that migrant workers are paid properly for their work across the board, employers don't have this incentive to reduce wages, protecting the wages of all Australians.

It's about making Australia a place where people from other countries want to work. For our economy and our future, Australians need migrant workers. According to the peak body for the building and construction industry, every building and construction trade is currently deemed to be in shortage. To address the current housing crisis and ensure that we have the housing we need for the future, we need skilled labour from overseas, particularly in rural and regional areas.

Shortages of skilled workers like cooks and chefs are also presenting an ongoing challenge. In 2022, Jobs and Skills Australia reported that 66 per cent of employers experienced difficulty filling hospitality roles, and an article by the ABC reported that businesses, particularly in rural and regional areas, are having to decrease operating hours to cope with persistent skills shortages.

Of course, shortages like these have more than one cause and require multifaceted approaches, but temporary migrant workers are an essential part of the picture to plug these gaps, reduce the pressure on these industries and keep small businesses afloat, ensuring that our economy keeps moving forward and that we maintain and grow the industries that are critical to our future.

As we discuss what migrant workers have to endure in our country, I'm proud again to be sitting on this side of the House and not that side of the House. Time and time again, those opposite have failed in their responsibility to protect temporary migrant workers from exploitation. Not only did they preside over worsening conditions for temporary migrant workers in this country, failing to actually implement the recommendations of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce they created, which responded to the revelation that 7-Eleven's mistreatment of some migrant workers essentially amounted to slavery; but they also actively prioritised temporary visas over permanent visas, changed visa rules to restrict workers rights and removed pathways to residency, actively degrading workers protections and leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

At every opportunity to demonstrate support for migrants, at every opportunity to show that they know the value of migration to our country, they've done the opposite. The comments made by those opposite about migrant communities during their last term of government don't bear repeating. You would think that, after their decisive losses in 2022 and, again, this year, they'd have realised that vilifying migrant communities and dog whistling to the far right doesn't play with Australians. But, no, they've persisted with this divisive rhetoric. With racist and offensive remarks, they've validated and legitimised the blaming of migrants for social issues instead of working with the government collaboratively to address the real causes of these problems—problems we're only dealing with today after 10 years of neglect under their leadership.

Blaming migrants is what a party does when they don't have real solutions to the issues we face as a nation. We know the coalition doesn't have real solutions. We knew it during the election campaign when they proposed solving the transition to clean energy with billion-dollar nuclear fantasies. We knew it when they proposed solving the housing crisis by reducing the number of international students in higher education and VET. We knew it all the 10 years they were in government, during which they reduced emissions by a meagre three per cent, ignored our ageing population and deemed it unnecessary to appoint a housing minister. We know it now, as they ditch net zero and let migrants take the blame for the consequences of their neglect.

Once again I'm proud to be on this side of the House, where we tackle the issues head on and where we treat migrants with the dignity, care and respect they deserve and actually listen to them and their experiences as members of our Australian community. Last week, Minister Thistlethwaite and I held a migration forum. It was held in my office and was attended by leaders of multicultural communities in my electorate. The forum was productive and insightful. It was an opportunity to ask questions and gain insights on parts of our migration system that were less well known. It was also a chance to share information about how the system works in practice and identify opportunities for greater cultural sensitivity and understanding.

I'm so proud to represent one of the most multicultural communities in the country, and every day that I represent my electorate I'm reminded of the value that migrants add to our community, whether it be in skills, in the insights they bring, in the ways in which they lift each other up and model close-knit, supportive and welcoming community or in the culture they share—food, language, celebrations and knowledge. This amendment recognises the value of migrants. It recognises that they deserve to feel safe and secure as a matter of human dignity but also as people who add immense value to our communities, who have an important role to play in our future and who are welcome in our country. I commend this bill to the House.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Gorton is new here. I wasn't going to pick on her about her speech, but some of the things that she mentioned—

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then don't.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to her in silence, so the member for Kingsford Smith can give me the same courtesy, and I'll get to you in a minute. She cannot come in here and start talking about racism in the coalition. She cannot make allegations about nuclear when it's not mentioned in the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. And she cannot come in here and talk about exploitation of migrant workers and blame the coalition. That's just a bridge too far. I had a good relationship with Brendan O'Connor, the member for Gorton's predecessor. He's a good man, and I'm sure you're a good person too. Brendan was often very bipartisan in the sorts of things that he brought to this parliament and in the sorts of ways that he wanted to make a better Australia. I wish him well in his future and I also wish you well in your parliamentary career. But don't just take the talking points that Labor gives you and think that that's the way to proceed with a debate.

What the coalition did in nine years—not 10 years but nine years—of government was make sure that they protected workers, and not just migrant workers, to ensure we had a fairer Australia. There's no better place to see it—I understand that your electorate is very multicultural. That's fantastic. So too is the Riverina, whether it's the Riverina that I first represented in 2010—which included the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, which I think is the cradle of multiculturalism in this country. So many people went there—pre World War II, but particularly after the Second World War, when the great mass of migration came out from Europe after the guns had fallen silent in 1945—and made a better life for themselves in regional Australia.

I understand and appreciate that the member for Gorton mentioned the regions and I commend her for that. Because it's the regions that are crying out for migrants, Member for Gorton. They truly are. And the sad reality is that we recently had a productivity summit that was headed up by the Treasurer, the member for Rankin. I think what we need in this nation right now is a planning and population summit. I think we need to do much better across the aisle when it comes to seeing where our migrants go. Because, all too often, they are going into the western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, and they're not reaching the regions where they're crying out for skilled labour and crying out for unskilled labour. They're not reaching out to those places. I appreciate there are measures in place that are put there by—I see the member for Parkes at the table. He's Assistant Minister for Resources and Assistant Minister for Agriculture and he knows about this. He represents more than half of the New South Wales landmass. And in western New South Wales, just like in the Riverina, they want migrants, they welcome migrants, and they celebrate migrants. So for the member for Gorton to suggest that coalition members are in any way racist is, I think, a bridge too far.

In Wagga Wagga, my home town, the largest celebration of the society—after the Wagga Wagga Gold Cup horse race, which is on the first Friday in May—is our FUSION BOTANICAL multicultural festival. It celebrates the food, culture, dance, music and attributes that migrants bring to our city. It's the largest inland city in New South Wales. You were right when you said, in one sense, that some migrants were exploited, but it wasn't the fault of government. There are some higher firms which do do the wrong thing, and they deserve the full force of the law brought against them. They deserve the immigration department raiding them—whether they're doing the wrong thing by farmers or the farmers in some cases are doing the wrong thing by migrant workers, and some of them do. Let's not beat around the bush about this.

I'll tell you one thing that Labor did do, which was, I believe, antimigrant. They changed the rules around the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme. What that did, as Labor tried to unionise that scheme, was force farmers to pay for work that was never going to be done by trying to even out the number of hours and extend the number of hours such that they would pay migrant workers money when there wasn't the work there at all. We know that farming work is so seasonal, whether it's in crop production, horticulture—whatever the case might be. The biggest losers out of that were not necessarily the farmers, who stopped employing the migrants; they were the Pacific workers themselves because the work stopped and the farmers turned off the tap. Labor brought this in, they tried to unionise the scheme, and it fell foul of the people that they were purportedly trying to help. They were the workers themselves, the PALM workers, those magnificent people who come here and do the jobs that Australians simply won't do or can't do.

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's 30,000 people here on PALM, Michael.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, Assistant Minister, seriously, I live it. I breathe it. I have these people come into my office all the time. I'm not sure how many of them come into your Melbourne office and talk to you about the pitfalls and the shortcomings of what Labor did when they made those changes to the PALM scheme.

I know I was right, because I was the shadow Pacific minister at the time.

Labor then put a pause on it and changed the rules. They did. They backtracked. You can't tell me they didn't, because they did. Labor then went back to the scheme as it was to begin with, because the farmers were leaving it in droves and so were the PALM workers. You know what was happening? The fruit was being left to rot on the ground. The work wasn't being done.

You can throw your head back all you like, Assistant Minister, and make out as if I'm off on the wrong tangent. I am not, because I had that lived experience. I'm there at the front and centre of what the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme is, because the Riverina lives it. We have those workers, we enjoy those workers and we applaud those workers. You cannot come in here, Assistant Minister, and tell me that the changes to that PALM scheme weren't wrong, because they were.

The Minister for Pacific Island Affairs backtracked and backflipped—the member for Shortland—because he knew that he'd got it wrong. He'd listened to Minister Burke and he knew that it was wrong, because the scheme started to fall apart. Don't try and tell me anything else, because I know. It's our farming areas that grow the food, grow the fibre and employ the PALM workers, who benefit from that scheme. They were being dudded by the changes by this Labor government, and that is true.

Now, let's talk about this legislation, shall we? Many businesses in the Riverina, as I said, rely on the migrant workers. It's a regional area that welcomes these—I don't know why you're shaking your head, Assistant Minister. I've said everything that was true, and with the PALM scheme—

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

The member for Cooper will leave her remarks for the rest of the contribution, and the member for Riverina will direct comments through the chair, not at the assistant minister. Thank you.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition supports stronger integrity in the skilled visa program, but what this bill does is it fails to achieve that objective without exposing employers to unjustified risk. I'm not saying that every labour hire company, every employer, is going to do the right thing. And I agree with the member for Gorton: those people who exploit workers should be exposed. Absolutely, 100 per cent, they should.

Certainly, I know the raids that were conducted by the immigration department when we were in government. I know the sort of work that those public servants, for and on behalf of the Commonwealth, do now, with Labor in power. They should be doing it. They should be exposing people who do the wrong thing by some of the most vulnerable people who come to Australia to work hard, to do the jobs that sometimes won't or can't be done by Australians themselves. We thank those workers, and we should be protecting those workers—absolutely, we should.

The publication of basic sponsor information could be seen as a proportionate step, but the bill, unfortunately, gives rise to too many potential problems and also leaves the scope of data of any exemptions to regulations. That's what the coalition is concerned about. That's why the coalition is not supporting this bill. We need to establish clear criteria and review mechanisms to prevent what would be arbitrary use of power—we should.

But there are so many potential risks to businesses which rely on migrant workers, particularly in regional areas—and it's regional areas where many of these workers are being engaged. It's regional areas, as I said earlier in my remarks, which welcome these people, which need these people and which by and large—the honest employers, those good farmers, those well-meaning communities—do the right thing by these workers.

More substantial antiexploitation reforms promised by the government as part of its Migration Strategy, including criminal sanctions, a whistleblower visa and repeat-offender bans against those recidivists have yet to materialise. Labor and the city based members get so uptight about these things; the city based members often want to tell us—I appreciate there are some city based coalition members sitting here with me!—how to live our lives, how to run our businesses, how everything should happen in regional Australia, they who've barely ever set foot in the place. I'm not saying that about the coalition city members in the chamber at the moment. You know who I'm talking about—they just need to learn a thing or three about regional Australia. And the government should be held to account for those unnecessary delays.

But don't just take my word for it; maybe find a farmer who does employ these workers and ask them. Maybe find a local government mayor—and I know the member for Parkes has many of them—and see how vital these workers are to the operations of our local communities in country Australia. As I say, by and large, people in regional, rural and, in particular, remote Australia do the right thing.

A concern raised directly with Senator Paul Scarr from Queensland, the immigration shadow minister, by the Business Council of Australia relates to the inclusion of nomination headcount data. I don't always agree with the BCA, but, certainly, in this instance, they argue that the information is not necessary for the stated transparency purpose and could expose employers to—wait for it, Member for Parkes—union harassment. We all know what happens when the unions start to harass. I say this—and Labor members can smile about this all they like—I was a union member for 21 years. I've been a member of a union. I understand that unions have a part to play, a role and a responsibility in this nation, but what we don't want is to give a green light to unions to harass employers unnecessarily.

Master Builders Australia also advised the good senator that migration agents—the key contacts for migrant workers, rightly or wrongly—would already have the information proposed to be included in the register. And, in cases where a migrant worker needs to find a new sponsor, these agents are already well placed to assist with that search. Alternatively, the information that the government is seeking to include in the new register could simply be shared with the migration agents rather than be made far more widely available.

So there are clauses and pieces of this legislation which are concerning, and Labor, in typical Labor fashion, has not properly explained this. Labor, in typical Labor fashion, did not do, I and my colleagues believe, the proper stakeholder engagement before it brought this legislation to the chamber. But what the 'Labor dirt unit' does is give the notes to the members, and they come in here and just assiduously read them and think that that's all true and all right. They've always got that 'decade of neglect and dysfunction' et cetera; we all know it because we hear it parroted all the time, and if you say it that often eventually you'll believe it. But this side of the parliament did some very good work in the migrant worker space. I hope that the Labor side also does some work in that space to benefit our migrant workers because regional Australia needs them and regional Australia needs legislation that is the best it can be.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Modern Australia is built on migration. The great economic advancements that we had in the wake of World War II were related to the 'populate or perish' policy that our immigration department and Arthur Calwell delivered in those important years after the Second World War.

Unfortunately, as a government, we're aware that too many migrants who are working in Australia have been exploited. They haven't received the correct wages and conditions that they are entitled to. Many unscrupulous employers have taken advantage of the power imbalance that exists between migrant worker and employer. Our government is determined to fix this and ensure that all Australian workers, including migrants, enjoy the full protection of the law and are paid a fair wage for a fair day's work. We're taking responsible action to fix the problems that we've inherited in this system from the previous government. We're restoring integrity to the system and working to bring migration back to sustainable levels, with a focus on skilled migration as a major part of the program.

When we first came to government, we commissioned Martin Parkinson to review the country's migration system. It hadn't been done for decades, but we thought it was important to take stock of whether or not the migration system was delivering better living standards, greater productivity to our economy and, most importantly, better living conditions for migrants who come to Australia. Martin Parkinson found that the system was 'broken' and in need of 'major reform'. In the wake of that, we put together the Migration strategy to fix the problems that Martin Parkinson had identified, which had developed under the previous government.

This bill that we bring to the parliament today is part of this process of fixing the issues that we inherited from the previous government, particularly those around combating migrant exploitation. The government have been clear about the need to bring migration back to normal and our actions are helping to achieve that. But we're also restoring integrity to the system and ensuring that it delivers the skills that we need. This legislation strengthens arrangements around skilled entry to Australia by introducing a public register of approved work sponsors, to be published and maintained by the Department of Home Affairs on their website. It will implement a commitment made by our government in the Migration strategy, which was released in December 2023.

The exploitation of those on temporary visas hurts all workers by driving down wages and worsening conditions for everyone. This reform provides enhanced protections and oversight mechanism. The intention is that the development of a public register will encourage transparency, monitoring and oversight. The register will help combat temporary skilled migrant worker exploitation by enabling workers to find a new sponsor and provide a resource to check that a sponsoring employer is legitimate. The proposed amendment in the bill is underpinned by extensive consultation that was undertaken with businesses, unions and stakeholders through the migration review that informed the Migration strategy.

Delays in the passage of this bill will mean delays in the implementation of the public register which strengthens the integrity of the temporary skilled visa program. The register is of employers who are approved as standard business sponsors and have nominated skilled workers for entry into Australia. The register may include details such as the type of approved sponsor, the name of the approved sponsor, the approved sponsor's ABN, the postcode associated with the approved sponsor's ABN, the number of sponsored workers and the occupations nominated by the approved sponsor.

Including the postcode registered with the approved sponsor will enable migrants who are considering mobility to identify employers nearby and increase the practicality of the register. The register will complement the public register for sanctioned sponsors published by Australian Border Force. This is a name-and-shame register that workers and other employers can go to in order to see who is abiding by the rules and regulations related to people working in Australia on visas. Approved standard business sponsors will be automatically included on the register without needing to request this at the time of applying for sponsorship.

The data behind the register will be uploaded and updated regularly to ensure that it remains current. Information will be provided to approved sponsors at the time of sponsorship application as well as messaging on the department's website to alert them to their business details to be included on the register. The register will also draw on already available public information, such as the information the sponsor has provided for their ABN. Any disclosure of information on the register would be consistent with the Privacy Act 1988. No personal identifying information of nominated workers will be included on the register.

The government has made a commitment in the Migration Strategy to develop a new skills-in-demand visa. The passage of this bill will continue the government's commitment to implement reforms to strengthen and maintain integrity of the temporary migration system. Migrants make a valuable contribution to Australia, not only to our prosperity but also to our communities, our national identity and our connections across the world. They have the right to feel safe and to be safe, particularly in their workplaces. Since 1945 more than six million migrants have chosen to make Australia their home, and each of them has in their own unique way contributed to our cities, regions and towns. They're our relatives, neighbours, friends, work colleagues, acquaintances, industry and business leaders, corporate and small-business owners, and of course workers—good, hardworking people who help shape our culture and our social, civic and economic life.

Our human diversity is both our nation's defining characteristic and our nation's greatest strength. My electorate of Kingsford Smith was one of the original homes to many of those post World War II migrants—the Greeks, the Italians and the Chinese—who settled in our area, and we're now into the third and in some cases fourth generation of those original migrants. I love living in a country where you can have a front-row seat to see Australians from so many backgrounds honouring their traditions while passing them down through those new generations.

We know how important it is to maintain the Australian people's trust and confidence in the migration system, to ensure that those settings that we put in place for migration work in the national interest and deliver better living standards for all Australians. At the same time, we're progressing an ambitious migration reform agenda, building a migration system that matches the needs of the nation and delivers for Australians and for migrants. This bill will help ensure that we have the skills we need into the future and ultimately make sure that the system is working in the interests of all Australians. The Albanese government continues our important reform work to ensure that the migration system works in the interests of all Australians and can be the best that it can be. Much has been achieved already, particularly in relation to system integrity, skills gaps and student migration. We're restoring public trust and aligning with Australia's economic and humanitarian programs.

Australia is a great country. We must never take our way of life for granted. It must be cherished, valued and nurtured, and this bill is an important step towards achieving this government's aim of a coherent migration strategy that delivers better living standards for all Australians.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025. This bill will insert a new section into the Migration Act 1958 that authorises the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs to publish a public register containing the details of employee sponsorship of skilled migrants. The bill title attempts to link this register to combating migrant exploitation. I have no issue with combating migrant exploitation or the exploitation of any workers. But particularly vulnerable people who are coming from overseas to work in our industries need to be protected. That is something that is believed on that side of the House and it is something that is believed on this side of the House. I have worked in horticultural industries for a great many years and I have seen a lot of good work on both sides from good people who want to make sure that the people who come from overseas to work in our industries are protected. I'm confident in saying many farmers and businesses in my electorate of Nicholls who welcome migrant workers feel exactly the same way.

Skilled migration, whether temporary or permanent, has always been about benefiting both sides of the equation. Farms and businesses facing critical workforce shortages are able to access skills and labour, and migrants are able to access jobs, be paid a fair wage and work under fair employment conditions. We have history of this. This is basically what built the electorate I now represent. Anytime anyone turned up in Australia, even before World War II, from the Albanian community, where were they sent? They were sent to where there was requirement for what was then unskilled labour. Those people often came to the Goulburn Valley, which was a burgeoning irrigation district that had a lot of dairy farms, a lot of fruit orchards. After the war, people from the United Kingdom, southern Europe, the subcontinent, the Middle East and now from Africa and parts of Asia have been welcomed in the Goulburn Valley. We all understand that we would not have built the economic miracle that is the Goulburn Valley without them.

People have come to build our industries, which become their industries. Often what happens in the Goulburn Valley is that these people who are paid a fair wage, by and large, save up enough money to buy their own farms, and that's happened over and over again. It's wonderful to see second-generation people whose parents came here with nothing becoming very wealthy people and able to educate their children in a way that they were never able to be educated because they were able to build the capital, buy their farms, and become incredibly successful business owners.

I don't deny there have been instances of migrant worker exploitation, and I believe it is actively sought out, stopped and the offenders prosecuted. If there are better ways we can do that then we are happy to work together on that. But I will tell you this: since 1 July 2024, the Australian Border Force have had a prohibited employer register providing information about employers, sponsors and third parties who have seriously, deliberately or repeatedly broken the law and have been prohibited from employing additional migrant workers for a period of time. Let me go to the media release of 29 September 2025 from the member for Bruce, the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs. The release is headlined: 'Australian Border Force names and shames business for exporting migrant workers', which sounds great and we support that. When you go to the first paragraph, it says: 'A Western Australian business has become the first in the nation to be publicly named and shamed by the Australian Border Force for exploiting vulnerable and migrant workers under the strong new laws introduced by the Albanese government.' That business is still the one and only business that has been shamed on the Border Force prohibited employer register. One business has been named and shamed between July 2024 and November 2025, and that is despite well publicised employer rights material attached to visa applications and despite clear lines of reporting breaches such as underpayment, sexual harassment, pressuring or coercing a temporary migrant to breach a visa condition or pressuring them to hand over their passport.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has a wealth of information for migrant workers and offers a dedicated telephone helpline that includes interpreting services. The PALM scheme provides ongoing welfare and wellbeing support to workers throughout their time in Australia, and PALM has a dedicated 1800 number support service. There's adequate information and assistance already available to migrant workers or prospective migrant workers. There's already a name-and-shame register of dodgy employers. That register is a mandatory publication requirement in the Migration Act that triggers Australian Privacy Principle 6.2(b), which permits the Australian Border Force to disclose the personal information of an individual where a law requires it to do so.

The point I'm making is that there has been a lot of good work from both sides of this chamber, when in government, to try and combat this. So what is being put in place now to help further combat exploitation of migrant workers?

Under the guise of protecting migrant workers, this bill allows the publication of personal details of individuals and corporate entities, regardless of whether they've even transgressed. It will publish the sponsor's activity and track record, apparently as a deterrent against the poor treatment of migrant workers. We've already got the risk of prosecution, hefty fines, 10-year bans, and naming and shaming. But those are not enough of a deterrent.

I want to emphasise this point. Employers of migrant workers—farmers and businesses like those in the Goulburn Valley—care about these migrant workers and know that their businesses can't operate without them, so why would they want to exploit them? Why should they be on a public register saying that they employ X number of temporary workers? Here's what I'm worried it will lead to—and I've seen this in my electorate. It can lead to unions deciding that they will go and harass those businesses, even if there's no evidence of anything being done wrong. I agree with the member for Riverina, who said before that unions have their place. They're an important part of Australian cultural history and an important part of Australian economic history. But I have seen them behave in really disappointing ways. They have come into the Goulburn Valley and tried to stir up a lot of trouble where there was no offence or exploitation happening. I think there are areas of migration that it would be better for the Albanese government to focus on. The temporary skilled migration system is failing regional businesses, and a lot of those regional businesses are agricultural businesses.

On 11 December 2023 Labor's migration strategy, outlining reform directions for Australia's skilled visa programs, was released. The promise was to 'fix' a 'broken system' and streamline visa processes so they'd better support industries that required temporary workers from overseas to plug workforce shortages. Key to the reforms was the introduction of the skills in demand visa. It replaced the temporary skill shortage visa. This skills in demand visa would have three target pathways: a core skills stream, a specialist skills stream for high earners and an essential skills stream focused on addressing lower income labour shortages. The essential skills stream is especially important for regional businesses because it replaces the labour agreement stream which so many industries rely on in my electorate of Nichols and across regional Australia. Currently, there are labour agreements covering horticulture, dairy and meat. These are all key industries for the Australian national economy—but particularly for regional Australia. Those labour agreements are still being used because, while the core and specialist streams are operating, the essential skills stream has not yet being implemented. We don't know what the conditions of the essential skills visa will be, but I do hope it creates a pathway for employers who are currently priced out of the migration system to recruit the workers they desperately need.

Why have so many employers been priced out? For most migrant workers, their visa has to meet the temporary skilled migration income threshold. When the Albanese government came to power, it was $53,900. On 1 July 2023, it soared to $70,000. But it is also indexed. In July 2024, it was $73,150 and, in July this year, it's $76,515. And dairy, horticulture and meat operate under labour agreements, which means they have to pay workers equal to or greater than 90 per cent of the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold. So, if we follow the same path from 2023, the minimum payment under a labour agreement has gone from $48,510 to $68,863 and, accounting for indexing, by July next year it will be around $72,000.

I have businesses in my electorate that desperately need workers and they have migrants who want to come on a temporary visa, but the mandated pay rates are well above what their Australian workers earn and are unaffordable for the employer. Not having workers is a big problem, because the businesses can't grow and they can't employ other people. And this is not just for farms; this has happened in the auto industry and it's happened in all sorts of industries. We need much greater flexibility in the visa program. Instead, we get this bill, which seems, at best, to be a replication and, at worst, a serious overreach.

No-one in this place wants to see migrant worker exploitation. Where it happens, it needs to be rooted out and prosecuted. I believe, as I said earlier, that both sides have done some good work over the past 20 or 30 years to strengthen that.

I just want to finish with an anecdote about what the common experience in regional communities is. A couple of years ago, a very prominent fruit grower from a fifth- or sixth-generation family passed away. It was of great sadness to the community, and I went to his funeral. He had been using the PALM scheme, employing Pacific workers and making sure that he had a vibrant business so that money could be sent back to those communities over generations. When that man died, and I went to his memorial service, there were over 30 Pacific workers and their families who attended and sang the most beautiful songs and music in unison that I've ever heard to honour a person who had put together a business, employed them, treated them so well and provided so much money and work. It was a real combination of capital and labour that worked for both the capital and the labour, and went on. The respect that was shown by him to those workers, and then, when he passed away, by those workers to him, was truly moving.

If there's exploitation, it needs to be rooted out. But, more often, these schemes are very good for Australia and very good for the migrant workers who come here. I don't think this bill helps that. I think this bill creates division. I think there are already some great things in place to assist the continuing combating of migrant exploitation. If there are serious proposals that can be put forward to further address that problem, I think that people on this side of the House would be very interested in working together with the government on it. But I don't think this is serious. I think it's a half-baked solution that doesn't address the problem, and it will lead to further division and harassment by some unions of regional businesses. Therefore, I won't be supporting the bill.

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

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

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

I know. It's a strong competition. I'm thinking within my portfolio space. You know, keep it narrow. I don't want to go too broad. It's late at night. But the decision to uncap the work hours that international students could work to allow them to work unlimited hours turned our high-quality student visa—our premium student visa—into some kind of low-rent guest worker visa. It corrupted the student visa pipeline. We're still paying for that today, with the non-genuine students that the Morrison government let in, working their way through the ART appeals system and gaming it. We're still paying for that failure today. It's the same principle: if you let too many low-skilled workers in without the right safeguards, it actually drags down the wages of Australian workers. As we know, that was their policy.

This bill is another key step to strengthen protection for migrant workers that helps all Australians. The bill seeks to enhance protections by introducing a public register of approved work sponsors. It implements a commitment that the government made in the migration strategy. There's a sort of shock-horror routine from those opposite: 'Ooh, where did this come from? Who made this up?' Well, it was in the migration strategy. I know those two words would be unfamiliar to them because we inherited a complete and utter mess in the home affairs department. They'd sacked over 1,500 workers and destroyed the capability of the Public Service. Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison, the whole legacy, the whole cabal, were up there with the Australian flag behind them. They'd run out of Australian flags for every press conference. But when you look behind the curtain, when you look under the hood, there's no compliance. There is literally no enforcement going on in the Department of Home Affairs that we inherited. We did the migration review, we did the Migration strategy, we set out the things we're now implementing to tighten up the system and we're rebuilding the enforcement capability in the Australian Border Force—and that's a proper agenda. This bill is the next step. It complements the register of sanctioned sponsors published by the Australian Border Force.

I thank the previous speaker and acknowledge something I haven't heard before: he read out one of my press releases. I've never met anyone who has read any of my press releases, so I'm very grateful to the member who spoke.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have!

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

The member for Werriwa has read one of my press releases! You can talk about that, too, when you get up.

The previous speaker mentioned that it was a deep surprise that there'd been a sanctioned sponsor named and shamed. Well, I say genuinely to the member: the legislation has been operative for a bit over a year. It takes proper process and time, and natural justice. You've got to be fair to the employers. You've got to do the investigation. Actually, let's go back to basics: you have to put the money in, employ the staff, train the staff and then send them out. You have to have public servants to go and do the enforcement—also a shocking concept, given the tens of thousands of staff they stripped out of the Public Service; there was almost no enforcement capability left in the Department of Home Affairs. I say to the member: in addition to the naming and shaming of that sanctioned sponsor, there are legal worker warning notices, compliance notices, enforceable undertakings, prohibited employers, employer sanction infringements, nonvoluntary location and human trafficking referrals—so there's been a whole range of sanctions put in place that the staff now working in the Australian Border Force are able to employ, and in many cases are employing.

This bill comes as the latest part of a package of reforms to address migrant worker exploitation. We've put in place a range of pragmatic measures that focus on strengthening the legislative framework available under the Migration Act and the enforcement capabilities of the department and the Australian Border Force to address employer noncompliance. That includes enhancing protections to encourage temporary migrants to report exploitation and resolve workplace issues in a timely manner.

The Migration Amendment (Strengthening Employer Compliance) Act amended the Migration Act with the following measures—I will outline a few of them for context because they work as part of a package. This is just the latest part of the package—and, to quote the member for Moreton, from last night, we like a big package! It's good reform. There are three new criminal offences targeting employers and others in the labour chain for misusing migration rules to exploit temporary migrant workers; a new power to prohibit employers found to have engaged in serious, deliberate or repeated exploitation of temporary migrants from employing additional temporary visa holders for a period; increased penalties for breaches of employer obligations under the Migration Act; and new compliance tools, which are the ones I touched on earlier—compliance notices and enforceable undertakings—to support a proportionate response to the issues of noncompliance.

I'll close where I started: the vast majority of Australians would not morally put up with migrant worker exploitation. It's a thing you hear about in the media, but some of these most vulnerable human beings living in our society on insecure visas are incredibly vulnerable to exploitation. It is that threat that rogue employers—most employers don't do this; most employers are decent—can make, using that power imbalance to coerce a vulnerable employee, be it through wage exploitation or sexual exploitation. As I said, Border Force, with these powers and resources, are now making reports every year of suspected human trafficking. We have a very clear agenda as a government to raise the wages of Australians. Part of that is indexing the minimum wage that employers have to pay migrant workers, and part of that is stamping out migrant worker exploitation.

Debate interrupted.