‘Make me great again’: Malcolm Turnbull channels Donald Trump on 457 foreign workers
TEMPORARY foreign workers will be banned from some industries and face English tests to get here under a Donald Trump-style crackdown to protect Australian jobs.
NSW
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- Business groups have mixed reaction to 457 visa scrapping
- Turnbull abolishes 457 visas for ‘Australian workers’
THE controversial 457 program has been scrapped and temporary foreign workers will face significantly tighter visa requirements as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared “Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs”.
The Prime Minister’s pledge came just one day after US counterpart Donald Trump made good on his own vow to cut back on the number of low-skilled foreign workers taking local jobs in his own country.
From March 2018, the 457 visa will be replaced by two temporary skilled visas — one for two years and the other for four — with stricter language testing and work experience requirements.
The new standards are part of a bid to target unscrupulous businesses importing low-skilled workers such as burger flippers instead of ordinary Australians who are looking for employment. Mr Turnbull announced the sweeping changes with a flourish of Trump-style rhetoric which vowed to put Australian interests first.
“We will no longer allow 457 visas to be passports to jobs that could and should go to Australians,” Mr Turnbull said.
His comments largely echoed those of Mr Trump regarding the US’s own H-1B work-visa program in November in a vow to “restore our jobs and bring back our jobs — it’s about time”.
Mr Trump was set overnight to sign the order dubbed “Buy American, Hire American”, which would direct the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Labor and State to propose new rules to prevent immigration fraud and abuse as well as changes to the H-1B system.
Figures on the far right of Australian politics spruiked the visa overhaul as their own work coming to fruition. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson immediately took credit for the government’s move, as did Australian Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi who said it “wouldn’t be happening without (his) reminding”.
Despite a cautious welcome from the Australian Workers’ Union, Labor accused the government of hypocrisy and “a rebadging exercise rather than a fair dinkum attempt” to fix the foreign worker visa program.
“The last time the Coalition was in government they got rid of all labour market testing around these visas,” Labor’s acting employment spokesman Ed Husic said.
Daniel Walton, the AWU’s national secretary, said it appeared to be “more rebrand than revolution” but also an acknowledgment that the visas are “easily manipulated by companies to dud Australians out of jobs and to lower employment standards”.
The Business Council, however, stopped short of endorsing the visa changes. Its chief executive Jennifer Westacott said: “It is crucial that (the government) work with employers to get the details right and ensure industry’s ability to fill genuine skills shortages is enhanced, not degraded.”
The current 457 visa, introduced by the Howard government, is valid for four years and can be rolled over indefinitely, with concessions for permanent residency after two years. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the 457 visa program was “open-ended, and it results, in many cases, in a migration outcome”.
“Under the temporary skills shortage visa short-term stream there will be a two-year visa, with the options of two years, but there won’t be permanent residency outcomes at the end of that,” he said.
Concessions only begin after three years for the medium-term visa holders.
There will also be a police check on new applications, and a reduced list of eligible occupations — 216 less.
However, many occupations being removed, such as goat farmers, historians, potters and turf growers, have not proved popular with local employers. But plumbers, nurses, electricians and mechanics remain on the eligible occupations list.
In November The Daily Telegraph revealed that an agreement approved by Labor in 2012 had been used by McDonald’s to bring in 285 foreign workers and hundreds more at other fast food outlets.
However, that agreement was scrapped by Mr Dutton.
There were just over 19,700 foreign workers on 457 visas in the state last year, down 3 per cent from the previous year — mostly working in IT and telecommunications.
Software developers, cooks, cafe managers and marketing specialists were also some of the most popular categories.
ANALYSIS — Sharri Markson
MALCOLM Turnbull is taking a page from the current mastermind of populist politics, Donald Trump.
With the slogan “Buy American and Hire American”, Trump will use an executive order to cut back on the number of foreign workers taking American jobs — a policy which has already caused considerable concern in Silicon Valley.
As Opposition Leader Bill Shorten tours regional Queensland, an area where One Nation is generating momentum, the Turnbull Government came out not with a slight reform to the flawed 457 visa program but a clean wipe-out.
Turnbull has got the politics of the announcement right. He is focusing on Aussie jobs and stopping foreigners from using the 457s as a backdoor to Australian citizenship.
Unsurprisingly, the bold idea to scrap the 457 program and start afresh with a new program is understood to have been Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s.
He has been campaigning on the issue, with front page stories in this newspaper, since November — highlighting how Labor had allowed foreigners to take jobs from Aussies.
It was big news when Dutton announced he was banning foreigners from working in fast-food outlets in February: the headline of The Tele was Burger Off.
Turnbull and Dutton had discussed scrapping the program late last year at a meeting in the PM’s office. The argument was that the brand of 457s had been trashed and was beyond repair.
Cabinet process on the new program began in January but it took a while to work out the employment list.
The axing of 457 visas is the first instalment of the Government agenda of tightening up citizenship in the space of Australian visas.
Dutton is also planning to introduce tougher tests to determine who gets a visa to Australia.
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