Barnaby Joyce says low-paid migrants shouldn’t get a pay rise

Barnaby Joyce made a bold claim while he weighed into the government’s plans to give low-paid migrant workers a pay rise.

Low paid migrant workers should not get a pay rise because their conditions are already better than where they have come from, according to Barnaby Joyce.

Wages for temporary skilled migrants will be raised by up to $16,000 from July under a major rewrite to Australia’s migration system after a review found the minimum income threshold paved the way for exploitation.

But former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has claimed the increase would be “counterintuitive”.

“We should be logical like they are in so many other countries where people are happy to get paid the wages, it’s worth so much to them, it’s better than the life they had,” he told Sky News.

“And we get a job done that won’t get done.”

Mr Joyce pointed to cleaning motels, fruit picking and packing offal at an abattoir as a job that no Australian, insisting a wage increase would only drive up prices.

Barnaby Joyce claimed foreigners should be happy with what they’re being paid. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“You’re basically saying for someone to make beds in a motel, which we can’t get anyone to do …. Put the wage up, well the only way they can get it is if they put your motel bill up,” he said.

The wages cap for skilled migrants has been frozen at $53,900 since 2013. From July 1, it will be increased to $70,000.

Industry body AI Group chief executive Innes Willox said it was “very hard to argue against” the raise given the new threshold was in line with CPI increases over that period.

But he stressed there would be issues to iron out in the hospitality and agriculture sectors.

Protections for low-paid overseas workers would also be increased but ACTU president Michele O’Neil warned there was still more work to be done.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil outlined the changes at the National Press Club on Thursday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“We want to see it indexed and put it at a higher rate … but what we know is that we still have this issue where many hundreds of thousands of people are not affected by that (income threshold) level,” she told ABC’s RN.

Business and unions are on a unity ticket over the sweeping migration reforms announced by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil on Thursday, which followed a review by former public service boss Martin Parkinson.

Under the changes, a “mess” of visa categories are set to be simplified, highly paid skilled foreigners will have their applications fast-tracked and the requirement for employers to advertise jobs locally before hiring a migrant would be scrapped.

Ms O’Neil said the strategy would, in time, lead to a reduction in the number of overseas workers in Australia but conceded that to catch up from Covid-19, the nation would experience a temporary uptick in migration.

Speaking with the Today show, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles denied the reforms equated to a “big Australia” policy.

“What we're trying to do with migration is make sure that we have a much more ordered migration system which can work for the country,” he said.

Originally published as Barnaby Joyce says low-paid migrants shouldn’t get a pay rise