MEDIA RELEASE
15 January 2019
Union Visa Restriction Proposals Would Spell Employment Chaos for the North
Enterprise North Executive Manager Kevin Byrne has warned that proposed ACTU changes to dismantle the current working visa scheme and conditions would have a crippling effect on the recovering economies across Northern Australia.
The Australian Council of Trade Union is currently pressuring Labor leader Bill Shorten to review the scheme with a view to banning backpackers working for a second year and putting further restrictions on their work conditions in the first year.
Opposition immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann has refused to rule out backing the proposal and is on the record as saying the number of temporary visa holders in Australia with work rights was “too high” and in a submission to a recent Senate inquiry, the ACTU called for a review of the scheme and pushed for a cap on the number of visas handed out, a ban on job ads that advertise only for working holiday visa holders and the scrapping of a second-year visa.
“If implemented this would devastate our agriculture industry in Northern Australia at a time when the industry is recovering lost domestic markets and expanding export opportunities into Asia. Additionally this would pull the rug from under our hospitality sector growth at a time when there are real signs of tourism recovery on the horizon” Kevin Byrne said
“The reality is we do not have a sufficiently large enough population base in the North from which to draw reliable and competent workers and government’s role should be to ensure that business and industry can plan for growth free of the uncertainty of labour market policy pressures”.
“These remote regional economies are entirely different to the mainstream urban economies to the south” he said.
“There is enough employment uncertainty around now with bedding in the recent changes to different visa categories and costly delays to existing processing timelines without the threat of wholesale decimation of our existing and growing backpacker employment market that many businesses have relied on to sustain business growth for decades”.
“The political debate should be about how can we help regions grow rather than what hand brakes we can apply to destroy the prospects of small business and remote industry to employ more people and generate prosperity and there is constant chatter and clamour about the need for investment attraction and growing our population base in the northern regions of Australia”.
“There is little doubt that there will be a groundswell of opposition to any policy proposals that will see our regional reliance on a trusted and reliable workforce threatened and by association our growth prospects, and this issue alone would be pivotal in any election campaign” Kevin Byrne said
About Enterprise North
Working in collaboration with other like groups, Enterprise North is an economic infrastructure and policy advocacy group driving a fresh agenda to grow the city and region within the Northern Australia growth framework. Our agenda is double the city and region population numbers in the next 30 years.
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Media contact: Kevin Byrne 0447 280 923 exec@enterprisenorth.org.au