Mark Kenny, Dan Harrison
March 14, 2013
Government claims that Australians were being forced to the back of the jobs queue are being driven by confidential feedback from voters telling the ALP its message about foreigners has hit the mark in key electorates.
Fairfax Media has been told focus group research being conducted for the ALP in recent days has shown strident promises by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and senior ministers to put ''Aussie'' jobs first, have tested favourably with voters, especially in Labor's heartland seats such as those in the sprawling western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.
A senior government insider said voters believed the 457 skilled migrant visa program had been rorted by unscrupulous employers, with the result that Australian workers with suitable skills were being shunted to the back of the jobs line.
Ms Gillard stepped up the case on Thursday morning in a major speech to the ACTU, saying she saw the visas issue as being about ''jobs, wages and working conditions – not just immigration management''.
She said while temporary overseas worker numbers were up 20 per cent on last year, employment growth over the same period was only 1 per cent.
''That in itself is evidence of a problem: the number of people coming here to fill short-term gaps should not be growing 20 times faster than employment overall,'' she said.
''There is clear evidence that in some growing sectors, importing workers on 457 visas is a substitute for spreading important economic opportunity to Australian working people.''
Ms Gillard singled out the information technology industry, the single largest sector for temporary overseas workers outside Queensland and Western Australia.
''One in 20 temporary overseas workers in Australia is doing IT work in New South Wales alone,'' Ms Gillard said. ''It is just not acceptable that information technology jobs, the quintessential jobs of the future, the very opportunities being created by the digital economy, precisely where the big picture is for our kids, should be such a big area of imported skills.''
She said applications for temporary workers had also surged in retail, accommodation and food services.
Speaking to reporters in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, on Wednesday morning, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott dismissed Labor's changes to 457 visas as ''a massive smokescreen to hide the government's persistent failures on border protection''.
''Every time the Prime Minister talks about 457s, think border protection failures, because that's all this is - a simple distraction, a transparent political tactic by a Prime Minister and a government desperate to hide their own failures,'' Mr Abbott said.
ACTU president Ged Kearney said it was disappointing that the 457 visa issue was being debated as a migration issue.
''It's disappointing that the debate has kind of got turned around,'' she told ABC radio on Thursday morning.
''This is an industrial issue. We are very worried about the exploitation of . . . 457 guest workers but as the government says . . . because they are so easily exploited, it undermines local terms and conditions and makes them attractive to unscrupulous employers who don't want to pay Australian wages.''
Labor believes that by highlighting 457 visas, it has tapped into an underlying community resentment, which provides a conduit back to the hearts and minds of once rusted-on supporters who have left the party in recent times.
However, the source denied the appeal spoke to a latent racism, but rather to a sense that employers wanted compliant workers who were less likely to assert their rights to proper pay and conditions.
Another factor is a sense that foreign workers were enjoying the economic boom, rather than locals.
The source said many Australians were feeling like it was ''somebody else's boom''.
The government ramped up its criticism on Wednesday in Parliament organising Dorothy Dix questions from its own MPs to press home its message that the scheme, originally introduced by the Howard Coalition government, needed tightening because of widespread abuse.
Warming to the theme, new Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor even managed to link the 457 visa scheme to the former government's WorkChoices industrial relations laws.
''Too many 457 sponsors are doing the wrong thing,'' Mr O'Connor told Parliament.
He said there was evidence of people being brought in from abroad to fill vacancies in the IT industry rather than training up willing young Australians.
The hospitality industry was also singled out.
''The approach of the opposition to 457s is just like WorkChoices by another name and it feels the same too - just let the market rip,'' he said.
