Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Senator Vanstone) to questions without notice asked today relating to skills shortages and to detention practices.

Senator Vanstone, in her public comments over the last week or so, has let the cat out of the bag. She has made it clear that one of the real agendas behind the government’s skilled migration policy—the increase of skilled guest workers in this country—is to suppress wages. She has confirmed again today in question time that one of the benefits of the government’s guest worker policy is that it helps suppress wage claims—the ones she regards as unreasonable.

We know that this government has an agenda that is all about downward pressure on wages. It is about seeking to drive down wages and conditions in this country. We know that that is the effect of the extreme industrial relations laws that this government has rammed through this parliament. The effect of these laws will be the seeking to lower the minimum wage in this country. We know, for example, that the government is imposing, through the delay in the so-called Fair Pay Commission considering the minimum wage claim, an effective wage freeze in this country for low-paid Australian workers because the Fair Pay Commission will not be considering this until spring this year, which is well over a year after the previous wage increase.

We also know that Professor Harper, the head of the Fair Pay Commission, has acknowledged that the government’s industrial relations legislation may well result in a lower minimum wage and we know for sure that, under this government’s extreme industrial relations changes, Australian workers can be required to trade away wages and conditions—such as overtime, penalty rates and rostering—for just 2c an hour. We know all of these things about the government’s industrial relations agenda and the effects it will have—that is, reducing wages, particularly those of the low paid in this country.

But this government is not content with simply imposing the parameters for lower wages on the poorest Australian workers through its industrial relations laws. The government also wants to ensure that employers have access to cheap sources of labour to undermine the wages and conditions of those workers in Australia who are lucky enough to be able, through their union or because of their position in the marketplace, to negotiate wages and conditions above the paltry minimum that this government seeks to impose. That is where the skilled migrant scheme comes in.

What we have seen from this government is a failure to train. The skills shortage we are experiencing in this country, particularly in the traditional trades, is a direct result of the Howard government’s failure to train Australians. I want to point out something, because in one of her answers Senator Vanstone decried Labor’s record on training. There was a particular Commonwealth minister who in 1996-97 proposed and presided over a reduction in Commonwealth training expenditure in 1997 and 1998. Which minister might that have been? Might it have been Senator Amanda Vanstone? Might it have been Senator Vanstone as Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs in 1996-97 who presided over a cut in Commonwealth training expenditure from $909 million to $904 million in 1998?

Because there was an attack on the Leader of the Opposition’s training record, can I also point out that as minister in 1992 he provided an additional $720 million over three years to grow the vocational education and training system in this country, which is about $925 million in today’s dollar terms. This government reduced VET grants in 1996-97 and abolished the National Skills Shortages Strategy in the 1997-98 budget. It has presided over a failure to train. As a result of that, we have a skills shortage that means that there are some workers in this country who, by virtue of having skills in demand, can negotiate, under certified agreements, higher wages and conditions than the minimum that this government seeks to impose through its industrial relations changes.

So what do the government do? They say: ‘We’ll get you too. We’ll make sure that these employers can bring in skilled workers who can be employed under the minimum conditions.’ So workers in this country get it every which way. They get it under the government’s extreme industrial relations laws, which are about reducing wages, as Professor Harper demonstrated and as the examples that we have cited, like Spotlight, have demonstrated. These industrial relations changes are effectively about reducing minimum wages in this country and, on top of that, the government are ensuring through their guest worker strategy that those workers who are able to negotiate higher wages and conditions above these minima have to compete with cheaper labour sources from overseas. (Time expired)

Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let’s look at the big picture about the skills shortage prevailing in Australia at the present moment. It is a pity we do lack skilled workers, but that is a manifestation of an economy that is working.

I recall that, when Labor was in power, the apprenticeship scheme had failed in every state. Why did it fail? It failed because the trade union movement did not like young people clogging up the system and working as what was seen by the trade union movement as cheap labour, because it could not extract the fee from apprentices that it could from a worker on full wages. That is why the coalition government, when we inherited the position we did in 1996 from the Labor Party, had to practically start from scratch and rebuild the skilled trades from the apprenticeship system that the Labor Party had failed to foster. One of the major reasons that we have skills shortages today is that the trade union movement put the kibosh on training young people back in the eighties and nineties. Of course, the big picture now is that instead of having one million people unemployed we have created well over one million jobs in the decade that we have been in power—the decade we have been in office; I understand that a subtle difference is that the Labor Party come to power and the Liberal coalition come to office.

I am qualified to speak on this point because I have been a member of the Australian Workers Union, the police union, the plasterers society, Actors Equity—some people say I should still be in the latter—and the Waterside Workers Federation. I know what the trade union movement is. I know that it only represents 11 per cent of private sector workers. I also know that AWAs, Australian workplace agreements, are very successful. People who are working on an AWA in the Pilbara do not want to go back to the trade union dominated competition between the employer and the employees. They are far better off now. A questionnaire was put out by one of the major miners in the Pilbara; it asked: do you want to go back to that system or are you happy with AWAs? Eighty-four per cent said they wanted to stay with AWAs. And why wouldn’t they? More productivity led to more wages and, strangely, led to more employment in the Pilbara.

The reason we are bringing in skilled workers from overseas is simply that the economy is booming. The economy of Western Australia is the best of the six states and the two territories. It is absolutely and totally booming. The Western Australian Labor government seems to be taking the credit for it. Mr Eric Ripper, the Treasurer of Western Australia, takes the credit for the booming economy in Western Australia. I wonder what the Chinese think about that, when the growth rate in their steel mills for the past 10 years has averaged 25 per cent. It is there to which our ore—not exclusively but significantly—goes from Western Australia. That is the sort of thing that is booming—that causes housing booms, more roads, more bridges and the extension of our freeways, and allows, in some instances, the trade union movement to survive. Had it not been for the boom, the trade union movement would represent less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce.

We bring people in from overseas to try to keep the economy going—to satisfy the demand. We do not bring them in to lower wages. Hansen—one of the companies which is anathema to those on the opposite side—is bringing in skilled migrants, not exclusively but predominantly from the Philippines, and is paying them the wages that the unions demanded. Hansen is paying the same wages to the people that are coming in—what is the beef? What is wrong with keeping the economy going? Don’t you know? I will tell you what you do know: you know that, unless the economy dips seriously, you people on the other side will never see the Treasury bench. And I think that is a good thing. Labor’s proposal for dropping AWAs is the greatest thing that could have happened to the government and guarantees our re-election in a couple of years. Do you think any business in Australia would put up with the dropping of AWAs? (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to questions about the Howard government’s use of foreign guest workers to lower Australian rates of pay and conditions. The ‘minister for deporting Australians’ has the gall to call the Labor Party xenophobic. Strewth overboard! Talk about hide: the government have made an art form out of playing the race card. But that is not the only card game this government play. Since the Howard government took control of the Senate they have legislated a three-card trick to create a second-class set of foreign guest workers in Australia. They have done this for one reason alone—that is, as the economists say, to put downward pressure on wage growth. What that really means is taking the money out of workers’ pay packets and putting it into the bosses’ pockets.

The first card was to remove the no disadvantage test so that bosses are legally able to offer work under AWAs at much lower wages and conditions than the going rate. The second card was to change the welfare laws so that if a person wanted to refuse being exploited by a scungy boss offering an insultingly low-level of wages and conditions then they would be refused the dole—‘Take the crap job or starve,’ they say. The third card was to open the floodgates to a wave of foreign guest workers on temporary visas with conditions which effectively remove any bargaining power they might otherwise have had. The cumulative effect of this three-card trick is that, even in this time of low unemployment, the Howard government has created the conditions necessary to drive wages and conditions down. There have been low-paid guest workers in Australia for years; that is not new. In the maritime industry, the Howard government has exploited a loophole in our maritime laws to allow foreign flagged ships with cheap and exploited foreign labour to move freight around our coasts for years. And now that the Howard government has taken control of the Senate it has been able to bring this practice onshore. I take the point made in Senator Lightfoot’s comments about a certain employer in the state of Western Australia—in my and Senator Webber’s home state. A certain builder, Hansen, is well known and quoted in the West Australian newspaper for bragging about bringing in 170 Filipino labourers that he could proudly use to undermine 30 years of union collective bargaining and improving wages and conditions within the construction industry.

I want to touch on another point that Mr Hansen was confronted with two weeks ago while he was beating his chest in every form of the Western Australian media about how he wanted to bring in more and more guest workers. He said that he was paying them the minimum wage: ‘What is the big deal? There’s no drama.’ But the CFMEU in my home state actually went and confronted one of Hansen’s building jobs and put a protest on his front gate. And do you know what? Not only were there CFMEU officials on the site, highlighting the danger to Australian jobs and Australian wages and conditions of guest workers’ being exploited, but workers—employees of Mr Hansen’s company—actually walked off the job and joined the protest. What does that say? I will tell you what it says: they know darn well what is happening. Australians are not stupid; they are not silly. They can see that these guest workers are coming in. Yes, we have a skills shortage created by 10 years of a Howard government. Let us make no mistake about that; you have been in office 10 years. It is no good blaming anyone else. You have given people like Hansen the loophole to exploit foreign workers.

What has happened—and this is a fact that was reported in the West Australian, that great media outlet in Western Australia that would not tell any fibs—is this: the West Australian said quite clearly that not only were these people on lower wages and conditions but they also resided in a house that was supplied to them by a family member of an employee of the company. They each paid $100 a week, and there were eight of them living in that house. That is $800 a week going straight to paying off an investment for someone else.

I ask you, and I ask everyone with a conscience, to think about this: when the boom subsides—and let us hope it does not for a long time—what are we going to do? The foreign workers will be exported back to their countries and Australian children will not be trained. Australian children will not be given the opportunity. (Time expired)

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If we ever doubted that Mr Beazley’s weekend announcement of rolling back existing Work Choices legislation and the 1996 workplace reforms was a reversion to old Labor repaying its labour masters with the abolition of AWAs and returning all things to a collectivity run by the unions with the central focus back to the old, grinding industrial relations, and if we ever doubted that that was a return to the old Labor—a party that has not adjusted and will not adjust to the new, flexible economy—we only needed to hear the previous speaker, Senator Sterle. He used all the old language of Labor. He came in here in defence, no doubt, of a surprise decision by Mr Beazley. But he was willing within a day or two to take up the cudgels and support that policy, though he may have been caught on the hop.

Mr Deputy President, you only needed to listen to his old language—that old, union, industrial language—that is so out of place today. It is so out of place amongst his own workers, for that matter. He was using terms like ‘scungy bosses’, ‘crap jobs’ and ‘hordes of foreigners’—and throw in the word ‘Filipino’ while you are at it! He said ‘exploited workers’; what a shrill performance that was. That is an example of how Labor have learned nothing since the 2004 election. They went to that election under Mr Latham with the policy of abolishing AWAs, and now they are going to the next election with that exact same policy. You have learned nothing from the lessons of the election, which was that you must have some economic credibility. People have to have some skerrick of trust in your management of the economy, but you may as well bring back Mr Latham. Your hate, your language, your paranoia and your shrillness, Senator Sterle, are equal to Mr Latham’s. You have learned nothing, and if you think the Australian public—let alone your workers, whom you purport to represent, or your new claim on middle Australia—will trust you, you will have the same destiny as you have had the past four elections. And thank goodness for that.

You will not be trusted with the Australian economy with your old-world industrial relations policies. You talk about grinding and lowering wages and you say that this is our ambition with the new Work Choices legislation.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They know all about that.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an absurdity. I heard Senator Campbell’s interjection. Before I go on to that point, to outline the record that this government has—and why would we jeopardise it?—I want to pick up the previous speaker on just one more point. I want all points home about the previous speaker and those on the other side, about just how old world they are and how tied up with the old union movement they are. That is his claim of the detriment to the unions of our new industrial relations laws in that most corrupt and criminal world of the building and construction industry and the unions involved in it. That was found by the Cole royal commission, and you come in here and defend those unions and defend that industry as if it was totally picked on. A royal commission found out what that industry was, and this government had the guts to reform it and put in place a running commission to reform that industry as part of all our reforms of industrial relations. And you cannot take it. You will not take it.

You have been rejected by your own workers. You have been rejected by the so-called middle Australia that you claim to have because our record is on the board. Why would we jeopardise a 16.8 per cent rise in wages? Why would we jeopardise a 4.9 per cent unemployment rate? These are all records for the past 30 years. I say that we will be tested on this reform, as we have always, and we know you are going to make this the centrepiece of your election campaign. But what a miscalculation you have made here today.

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps after that unique contribution from Senator McGauran we might actually return to the issue at hand and inject some reality into the debate about wages, skills shortages and the temporary migration of overseas workers. For Minister Vanstone to assert, as she did last week, that the only reason there is opposition to temporary skilled migration is that it undermines a union’s ability to exploit high wages amidst the skills shortage is just ludicrous. The reality is, as I have said in this place time and time again, skills shortages in this country do not just materialise overnight.

This issue has been confronting this government for 10 long years. Let us consider the build-up of this crisis in skilled labour over the last 10 years. Firstly, we have the decreases in TAFE funding and places for young Australians in training. Who presided over that? This government and Senator Vanstone in particular. Secondly, fewer people of all ages are actually completing their apprenticeships. Who is responsible for coming up with a package that encourages people to do that? This government. Thirdly, we have an ageing workforce that has seen many tradespeople retire and they are not being replaced. Finally, after years of economic growth, this government has not seized the opportunity that offers and has just sat on its hands. That is how you get a skills shortage, a skills crisis, after 10 years. They are the ingredients, not whatever it was that Senator McGauran was trying to say.

As I said, a skills shortage does not suddenly appear without warning. This current crisis is no different from any other that we have had before. To then argue that the only interest that unions have in the skills shortage is to drive up wages is absolutely absurd because, if that were the only interest they had, they could do what this government is doing and just sit on their hands and not talk about training or access for people but just let wages go up, as they inevitably will with a skills shortage. Unions have been trying to alert this government to the skills shortage for years. If it were as the minister claimed last week, the unions would have been sitting on their hands, waiting for the skills shortage to force up wages. Instead, responsible trade unions do not want the boom-bust cycle that Senator McGauran seems to rejoice in; they want long-term growth and full employment.

Wages and skills are about basic laws of supply and demand—I would have thought that those opposite would know that. When any commodity or service is in high demand and low supply, it has the effect of driving up the price. That is no secret. It is basic economic theory that is widely accepted and in common knowledge everywhere, except perhaps among those opposite. To argue that unions in this country are only interested in driving up wages to exploit a skills shortage is to turn that economic theory on its head. The reason the trade unions and those of us on this side of the parliament are involved in this current argument about temporary workers from overseas is not about driving up wages but about ensuring that nobody is being exploited.

It does not serve our national interest if we fail to meet our training challenges in the years ahead. Simply importing labour from overseas meets the short-term needs of overcoming a skills shortage, but it does not and cannot address the longer term needs of our country. There has always been an acceptance on all sides in this country that immigration was and is an important factor in building our country. That has not changed, but our concerns are that, if employers are using the skills shortage to source foreign labour as a means of driving down costs, this is not in our national interest and it is certainly not in our long-term interest.

The government and those opposite should be about ensuring that this skills shortage is overcome by a range of policy initiatives that deal with the problem now and well into the future. Do not just sit on your hands for another 10 years—or however long you are allowed to sit on that side of the chamber—actually do something to address the long-term needs of our labour market. The approach of this government has been to ignore all the warning signs. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.