Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

It is a pleasure to speak today on a bill that will lead to some much needed reform of Australia’s migration policies. My office deals with many constituent enquiries surrounding migration and these enquiries are rarely solved quickly, but require much research and time. Often these enquiries are about reuniting family members, finding employment or gaining citizenship, all situations that can cause significant stress.

Under the previous Government, Australia’s immigration policies were cause for international condemnation, particularly our detention policy. Many people - even Australian citizens - were kept in detention for years, despite posing no danger to the community and children were also trapped in those environments.

This destructive detention scheme caused much pain to many and cost taxpayers a lot of money. The Rudd Government is working to change all this and is working to reform the system to take a risk based rather than punitive approach to detention policy.

This government is committed to protecting our nation from the potential dangers posed by some unauthorised arrivals or unlawful non-citizens, but we are also committed to treating people with dignity.

We are not putting our country’s security in jeopardy as we make these changes; we are simply putting the concept of human decency back into Australia’s immigration policies. Labor does not believe that we can only protect our nation at the expense of other’s rights and quality of life.

The Government is still maintaining mandatory detention for those unlawful people who are not Australian citizens and who present an unacceptable risk to the community or who repeatedly refuse to comply with their visa conditions. Unauthorised boat arrivals will still be subject to mandatory detention for health, identity and security checks. But let me be clear that we will only use detention centres as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time.

The Joint Standing Committee on Migration is currently conducting an inquiry into Immigration Detention in Australia. As a member of the committee, I have visited a number of detention centres in Victoria, Christmas Island and Western Australia with the inquiry and these experiences have given me a deeper understanding of the system. The issue of immigration is always an emotive one and detention centres are something that people are extremely passionate about, one way or the other; this was evident in the 133 submissions received by the inquiry.

The committee has held public hearings in Darwin, Christmas Island, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The information presented by witnesses at these inquiries is often moving and always informative.

The inquiry so far has proven to be very beneficial to the Government and I thank everyone who has taken the time to take us around detention centres, appear as witnesses and make submissions. We are making informed decisions as we move Australia forward.

I am pleased to note that these moves forward haven’t gone unnoticed. Earlier this month the Sydney Morning Herald published a story regarding the Rudd Government’s fast assessments of 26 Afghan and Iranian Asylum seekers on Christmas Island.

Steven Glass, a volunteer for the Refugee Advice and Casework Service is quoted as saying “ a number of the asylum-seekers are not behind fences and the kids are all going to the local school. My overall impression is [the department]- and GSL are going to whatever lengths they can to make conditions as good as possible. They are looking at planting trees, tearing down fences.”

The Citizenship Test is another Howard Government policy that caused great distress to my constituents last year. They visited and phoned the office asking many questions with much confusion and fear in their voices. The Rudd Government has also expressed its concerns about the structure and content of the test. For this reason we recently conducted an independent review to determine its fairness and effectiveness.

On Monday, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans tabled the report resulting from this review. The review found that while 99 per cent of skilled migrants were passing the test, almost one fifth of those who come to Australia as part of the Humanitarian Program are not. This shows that the test is acting as a barrier between people and Australian citizenship, not equipping them for citizenship as intended.

The Review Committee’s central recommendation is for the legislative requirement to have an “adequate knowledge of Australia and of the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship” be linked to concepts and information people need to understand in order to make the Pledge of Commitment. This recommendation is supported by the Government.

Another reform that the Government has made is the abolition of the temporary protection visa regime, a regime which actively prevented refugees from being able to rebuild their lives. The regime denied refugees the entitlements and security of permanent residency, despite our international obligations. Not only was this a further stain on Australia’s reputation but it also entirely failed to serve its claimed purpose.

Evidence shows that the temporary protection visas did nothing to prevent unauthorised boat arrivals, in fact, numbers actually increased not long after the introduction of the regime.

This treatment of refugees was disgraceful. It is important that we treat these people with respect and recognise the varied benefits of accepting others into our country, including filling skills shortages. The resources boom, low levels of unemployment, and the failure of the previous Government to invest in the education and training, have contributed to skills shortages across the country.

Labor has tackled these skills shortage which were ignored by the Howard Government for so long. In May we released a Budget that invests $19.3 billion in education and training to ensure we continue to provide employment and training opportunities to Australians.

The Budget outlined the Government’s commitment to invest $1.9 billion over five years to fund up to 630,000 new training places. These new places will skill Australians for the jobs of tomorrow and close existing skills gaps.

While this investment into the education and training of Australians for the future is crucial, we need to take action that will give us immediate results too.

Over the last five years Australian employers have increasingly turned to the temporary skilled migration program to bring in the skilled workers they need. The Rudd Labor Government has eased the pressure on employers by adding an extra 31,000 skilled migrants to the 2008-09 migration program.

We have recognised that this record 30 per cent intake increase could put strain on a department already struggling with demand, and so we are working to tighten up processing procedures and improve servicing standards.

The Rudd Government knows that business needs as many skilled people it can get, so we are working to make the process easier for both employers and employees.

In light of the current economic situation, the numbers of skilled migrants coming in may change. The migration program is designed to fill positions that can’t be filled locally and Minister Evans is working to better target the program to the areas most in need, including; IT, engineering and health care.

While making amendments to existing programs, the Rudd Government has looked at new ways to assist Australian employers. The Australian horticulture industry reports that up to $700 million in fresh produce is left to rot because of the unmet demand for low skilled workers. We have developed the Pacific Island seasonal worker scheme to address this crisis.

The scheme will enable Pacific Islanders to work in Australia as seasonal guest workers, by expanding the existing subclass 416 visa to cover workers who have been invited by an approved organisation. The pilot scheme will run over three years and will allow up to 2500 seasonal workers from Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu to work in the horticultural industry in regional Australia for up to seven months each year. This type of scheme has received widespread support from organisations, with the World Bank stating that ‘there is no doubt that expanding economic opportunities for Pacific Islanders will translate into a stronger Pacific and that is in the interests of all countries in the region.’

We have also taken action to reform the 457 visa program and this bill will take that reform even further. The previous Government allowed the 457 visa program to run without sufficient safeguards to prevent the exploitation of temporary skilled foreign workers or the undercutting of wages and conditions of Australian workers. Many stories emerged of 457 visa holders being exploited. One case which then Shadow Minister for Immigration, Integration and Citizenship, Tony Burke, spoke of last year was of a person who was being paid the official immigration rate of $42,000 a year, but had had to spend $20,000 to purchase the job. And that $20,000 was being deducted in equal instalments every day he was paid for the first year.

So he was being paid a further $20,000 less than what the visa said he was going to be paid and of course once the twelve months was up and he’d repaid the debt, he was immediately terminated without cause. The economy desperately needs access to temporary skilled labour, but this is only sustainable if the community is confident that temporary overseas workers are not being exploited or used to undermine local wages and conditions. The Rudd Government is committed to improving the 457 visa scheme, whilst protecting the rights of overseas workers along with the employment opportunities of our own citizens.

On the seventeenth of February this year we announced a package of migration measures designed to help alleviate Australia’s skills and labour shortages and ease inflationary pressures including:

• adding 6000 places to the general skilled migration program;
• expanding the reciprocal working holiday visa program for young people;
• allowing working holiday makers who work for at least three months in the construction sector to apply for a further working holiday visa; and
• appointing an external reference group to advise how temporary work visas could contribute to the supply of skilled labour.

The Government has made great progress in positive immigration policy reform, and the bill before us today is the next step in that reform process. The Migration Legislation Amendment (Worker Protection) Bill makes amendments to the Migration Act 1958. The aim of these amendments is to enhance the framework for the sponsorship of non-citizens seeking entry to Australia.

The new framework will strengthen the integrity of temporary working visa arrangements, including the existing Subclass 457 visa program.

This will be achieved through four main measures:

• providing the structure for better defined sponsorship obligations for employers and other sponsors;
• improved information sharing across all levels of government;
• expanded powers to monitor and investigate possible non-compliance by sponsors; and
• the introduction of meaningful penalties for sponsors found in breach of their obligations.

Let me go through these in more detail. The bill proposes to amend the Migration Act to provide that the Migration Regulations 1994 may specify the obligations to which particular classes of sponsor will be subject, together with when those obligations apply and how they may be satisfied. These obligations are not specified in the bill as a high degree of flexibility is necessary for the program to operate effectively over time and there will be a need to prescribe additional obligations as more visas are brought in with the new framework. If the obligations were written in this bill, it would make putting additional obligations in a very slow and difficult process.

Though the obligations have not been written, I can say that when prescribed in the Migration Regulations, they will:

• lead to effective and efficient identification of non-compliance - this could be done for example by obliging sponsors to cooperate with monitoring by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship;
• discourage inappropriate use of temporary skilled visa programs - this could be done for example by obliging sponsors to reimburse the Commonwealth for location, detention and removal expenses should the visa holder abscond; and
• provide an effective price signal to encourage the hiring and training of Australian citizens and permanent residents; and, most importantly protect overseas workers from exploitation.

The current provisions for the disclosure of information have proved insufficient for effective and efficient operation of the temporary skilled migration program. For example, the Department cannot at present lawfully collect contact details of Subclass 457 visa holders from larger employers for the purpose of providing those visa holders with information about their rights and entitlements in Australia.

The Migration Legislation Amendment (Worker Protection) Bill will rectify this by expanding the range of circumstances in which the information may be shared between the Department, the sponsor and the visa holder. These amendments will ensure that the three parties involved in the program will be adequately informed of each others circumstances.

The bill will insert new provisions which amend the Taxation Administration Act 1953. These amendments will allow the Commissioner of Taxation to disclose tax information, if the tax information relates to a visa holder, former visa holder, approved sponsor, or former approved sponsor. This will allow the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to confirm with the Australian Taxation Office what taxable salary is being paid to visa holders.

The third main measure is another move designed to increase the protection of our workers from overseas. Amendments proposed in the bill will give specially trained employees of the Commonwealth the power to monitor compliance with program requirements, including the redefined obligations. These officers will be known as Inspectors and will be appointed by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.

Inspectors will be able to conduct site visits as well as request relevant documents from sponsors in writing within specified timeframes.

The powers of these Inspectors will include:

• inspect the premises;
• interview any person;
• require the production of documents; and
• copy such documents.

The final measure I wish to discuss is the introduction of penalties. Current administrative sanctions have failed to encourage compliance in all circumstances. The amendments proposed in the bill introduce a civil penalties framework to actively discourage non-compliance.

This will allow civil legal action to be taken against sponsors who are found in breach of the redefined obligations found in the Migration Regulations. The maximum penalty per offence, which will be determined by a Court taking into account all relevant circumstances, is $6 600 for an individual and $33 000 for a body corporate. It is hoped that these penalties will encourage sponsors and visa holders to meet their obligations so that this system can be as fair and effective as possible.

Migrants play an important role in our country and they deserve to be treated as equal to Australian citizens. This bill will work towards that equality by ensuring that the working conditions of sponsored visa holders meet Australian standards. I commend the bill to the Senate.