Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we talk about wage theft and worker exploitation in Australia, it's easy to quote the horrifying statistics and forget that this exploitation has a human face. Today I want to share the story of Gabriela—or Gabby, as her friends call her. Gabby is a disability care worker on a bridging visa from Colombia working in Sydney's western suburbs. She is one of the 1.4 million workers in Australia today on a temporary visa that comes with working rights. Gabby is one of the thousands of workers in Australia who have been bullied and who have had their hours reduced for protesting her employer's failure to ensure proper care for clients.

Gabby told me that she came to Australia to practice in this industry because of her passion for helping people—a passion driven by her faith and desire to be a good Catholic and help people in need. She told me how incredibly lucky she thought Australia was to have a scheme like the NDIS that cares for people with disabilities when so few countries can. However, her gutless employer, Community Connections Australia, punished her for doing the right thing. This is a company that should be working to do the right thing, not turning on their staff who blow the whistle when the employer fails to provide quality care to people with a disability.

I visited Gabby this month and she told me: 'One night I was doing a shift at a disability group home, where I witnessed a client physically abusing another. During the incident, I was also assaulted by the client. I filled out a report and raised concerns about how the company was handling the living arrangements.' How did the company respond? They cut her hours from 34 hours to just 1½ hours per week. When she reminded management that she was entitled to a minimum of four hours, they handed her a measly five hours in total. Her hours were not because of lack of demand; they were simply handed to another employee. She was bullied, overhearing a manager referring to her as 'a bitch'; she was pressured to sign documents claiming she had completed training that she had never been given; and she was denied a union representative in meetings with management to discuss the incident. She was told that they would not provide a reference so that she could apply for other work, effectively trapping her. Her contract carried clauses that prevented her or her fellow employees from going to the media if they saw instances of abuse or neglect.

This is further evidence that our system is broken. Workers who see situations of abuse or incidents of wage theft are being denied the right to blow the whistle. She knew what was happening was unfair, but like many workers on temporary work visas she was scared to complain further for fear she might be deported. Thankfully, she received support from her union.

The Unions NSW Visa Assist program is advising and supporting workers like Gabby. Mark Morey, Thomas Costa and their team at Unions NSW must be commended on this program. Visa Assist is a partnership between Unions NSW and the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre. The partnership allows workers to access expert advice and visa support so they don't fear asserting their rights under the law. The state government in Victoria has also recognised the scale of this problem of exploited migrant workers. They've established the Victorian Migrant Workers' Centre to support workers subjected to wage theft and poor working conditions.

So, what is the problem with the federal government making similar commitments? This government has presided over an unprecedented blowout in the number of people in Australia on temporary visas who are vulnerable to exploitation. In a University of New South Wales and UTS survey of working visa holders, they found that nearly a third of those visa holders received $12 or less in hourly pay—well below the minimum wage. According to Department of Home Affairs's own figures, the number of people on bridging visas in Australia has reached the record-high level of 230,000 in March this year.

The Morrison government has failed to address the exploitation of temporary workers and the Morrison government has failed to address the depressing effect that exploitive temporary worker pay and conditions are having on the wages of all Australian workers. Now state governments and unions are stepping up to assist the workers to assert their basic rights. I would say to the federal government: 'You should look at the model partnership between Unions NSW and the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre.' The federal government has created many of these problems, so the federal government should do their bit and commit much needed resources to collaborations like this to defend migrant workers from the employers who have made exploitation a business model. After all, it is civil society organisations that I'm talking about—community groups, churches, volunteer associations and, of course, trade unions—that have a mandate to take care of people who would otherwise be voiceless.

Finally, I want to make the point that this coalition government, now in its third term, has three new trade deals that they want to enact by getting enabling legislation through this parliament. These deals include thousands more temporary visas on top of the 1.4 million people on temporary work visas who are already here. It includes visas covering skilled jobs like electricians, nurses and chefs. It also covers seasonal workers like fruit pickers, whom we know are among the most exploited in our country. And we're especially concerned about adding to a pool of workers that is already highly vulnerable to exploitation and wage theft. Industry leaders and farmers are also concerned about this and have been calling on the government to desist from expanding this worker program until the persistent issue of underpayment and exploitation are addressed. Under this government, we've been waiting a long time for these issues to receive more attention.

It's been six months since the release of the report of the government's Migrant Workers' Taskforce, aptly chaired by Professor Allan Fels and Professor David Cousins. It's a report that correctly describes in horrific detail the state of abuse of migrant workers. But this government has made it clear that it's not a priority. However, the commonsense recommendations in this report go to these points: introducing legislation to clarify that a migrant worker is entitled at all times to workplace protections; making it illegal to advertise jobs with pay rates that would breach the Fair Work Act; making it an offence for employers who knowingly and unduly coerce a temporary migrant worker to breach the conditions of their visa; and, further, recommendations preventing employers who repeatedly exploit migrant workers from employing them in the future for specific periods. Their inaction speaks volumes of the government's hypocrisy—the hypocrisy of claiming to be strong on borders but failing to stop the industrial exploitation and breaching of visas. We owe it to workers like Gabby and to all Australia's working women and men to continue to hold the government to account and to speak out.