Vamvakinou calls for crackdown over rorting in hire of foreign meat-industry workers

Photo: AAP/Mick Tsikas

The chair of the standing committee on migration and human rights in Australia’s federal parliament, Maria Vamvakinou, told media that she had heard directly from foreign workers on temporary visas that Australian recruitment syndicates and employment companies had taken their passports, and also threatened their visa sponsorships and drew them into extensive debt with the people who recruited them.

Ms Vamvakinou told The Age that without migration legislation in place, Australia would become a “nation of guest workers”.

“Our migration and skilled migration programs are something I strongly believe in and have vigorously advocated for, including for their expansion. But to allow what are meant to be programs of opportunity to become a bazaar of cheap labour hire for misery merchants is something I want to see firmly cracked down upon,” Ms Vamvakinou said.

“The accounts I have heard first hand warrant a look into the areas of worker exploitation and human rights within the framework of Modern Slavery Act”.

A report in The Age stated that Home Affairs alerted former federal immigration minister Alex Hawke that some labour hire companies and offshore recruiters were selling fake documents to unskilled foreign workers to help them pass English language and work experience tests that are required by the Meat Industry Labour Agreement (MILA) program.

In some cases companies in the meat industry promised that for a large fee they could secure resident status for low-skilled workers from Asian countries. The meat-processing industry is one of regional Australia’s biggest employers.

Home Affairs sources, who could not speak publicly, said that despite the alerts, the Scott Morrison government did not conduct any review of the MILA program that it had established.

The newspaper quoted a declassified August 2021 briefing which stated that “suspicious money transfers between facilitators and visa holders in the MILA program as well as large money transfers from visa holders to offshore entities. … Multiple allegations from separate sources have been received suggesting ‘payment for visas’ to facilitators for services including the provision of bogus documents … in order to access the MILA program and therefore permanent residency.

Mr Hawke revealed this week that MPs in rural areas and meat companies had applied pressure over delays in the approving of meat industry visas and that he had instructed his department to prioritise approval for visas at processing plants where there were “no alleged integrity problems”.

The Australian Meat Industry Council’s chief executive officer, Patrick Hutchinson said that the industry was faced with a “workforce crisis outside its control” and that it needed to rely on foreign workers as it had done for many years.

He said that meat industry wanted companies that were to have acted illegally in managing foreign workers to face the courts.

“We want to ensure no third party, through poor and illegal management of our international workforce, damage our members and industry,” Mr Hutchinson said.

Federal Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the previous government had failed to tackle the “endemic migrant-worker exploitation”.