Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (18:35): 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—
Mr Thistlethwaite: Then don’t.
Mr McCORMACK: 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 the shadow assistant minister for resources and shadow 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 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.
Ms Kearney: There’s 30,000 people here on PALM, Michael.
Mr McCORMACK: 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. But I know I was right, because I was the shadow Pacific minister at the time.
Ms Kearney interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: 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—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Young ): Order!
Ms Kearney interjecting—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: 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.
Mr McCORMACK: 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, and 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. As I said earlier in my remarks, it’s regional areas 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 recidivists, have yet to materialise. Labor and the city based members get so uptight about these things. The city based members—I appreciate there are some city based coalition members sitting here with me!—often want to tell us how to live our lives, how to run our businesses, how everything should happen in regional Australia, when they’ve barely ever set foot in the place. I’m not saying that about the coalition city members in the chamber at the moment, but 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.
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. The 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 unions a green light 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. In typical Labor fashion, Labor did not do the proper stakeholder engagement, I and my colleagues believe, before it brought this legislation to the chamber. The ‘Labor dirt unit’ gives the notes to the members, and they come in here and just assiduously read them, thinking 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.