Foreign workers get the flick as Mal moves to secure his own job

Rachel Baxendale reports for The Australian online, yesterday:

The Turnbull government is abolishing 457 visas. In a Facebook-first announcement, pre-empting a press conference to be held shortly, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the temporary visas for foreign workers would be replaced by a new class of visa, better targeted to ensure that foreign workers were only brought in to fill genuine skills shortages.

These 457 visas? Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter, March 14, 2013:

@JuliaGillard attack on 457s strikes at heart of skilled migration system.

Yep, those visas. The Prime Minister on Facebook, yesterday:

Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs … So we’re abolishing 457 visas, the visas that bring temporary foreign workers to our country.

Sound familiar? Then prime minister Julia Gillard, ABC News 24, March 5, 2013:

I don’t want to hear stories of Australians missing out on a job because a 457 visa has been misused …

As opposition leader, Tony Abbott campaigned hard against Gillard’s 457 crackdown. SBS World News, March 5, 2013:

One of the things that I thought was very jarring in the prime minister’s approach … was this assault on foreigners.

Turnbull on Twitter, March 14, 2013:

The rhetoric and resonance was thoroughly xenophobic. The actual changes could have been announced without chauvinistic fanfare.

This government actually relaxed 457 rules under Abbott. AAP, October 14, 2014:

The application process for the temporary visa program would be streamlined and English language testing relaxed, Mr Abbott said.

But either the foreigners lose their jobs or the Prime Minister does. The Australian, April 3:

The Coalition’s support has slipped to another dangerous low … with the government trailing Labor by 47 to 53 per cent in two-party terms.

Labor’s Bill Shorten welcomed the move, kind of, on Twitter, yesterday:

Make no mistake, the only job Malcolm Turnbull cares about saving is his own.

However, the Opposition Leader has a mixed history with 457s too. The Australian, January 17:

Approvals for 457 visas when the Opposition Leader held the portfolio in 2012-13 were up to 71 per cent higher in some parts of the country compared to 2015-16 under the Coalition.

And here’s the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, in Grace Ellison’s Turkey To-day, 1928:

My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s power grab in last week’s referendum to change the constitution has finally killed secular Turkey. Paul Maley writing for The Australian online, yesterday:

Erdogan has repudiated the compact between Islam and the secular state … The tolerant, westward-looking Turkey of those days has been replaced by a fearful, putsch-ridden country where people are afraid to speak their mind and the Islamists have been empowered.