Evidence to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): ...inquiry and appearing today for the inquiry. I'll now invite you to make a short opening statement, no more than 5 minutes, and then we'll have a discussion and informal...

Jacqueline King: Thank you. Uh, thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee members. If I could start first by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we are meeting here today, the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, and pay our respects—my respects—to their elders past and present.

Jacqueline King: The Queensland Council of Unions is the peak body for Queensland's trade union movement. We represent 25 affiliated unions, around 400,000 union members across Queensland. If I could start by just saying that there are a number of matters in terms of the ACTU submission that I wanted to refer to. So our submissions rely primarily on, for the migration system itself, the ACTU submissions, but I will go to the specific ones.

Jacqueline King: But it's also informed and heavily informed through our exposure to the direct experience of migrant workers. So for the last 12 months, the QCU has been running a program called Queensland Migrant WorkWise, which is funded through the Department of Home Affairs to provide education and information to temporary visa holders about their migration and work-related rights and entitlements, as well as to employers of temporary visa holders.

Jacqueline King: We have a number of outreach officers who are out directly in the regions. So in terms of Queensland—I know we have two Queenslanders that are here today on the committee—over 50% of Queenslanders live outside the greater Brisbane region. And so for us, regions are incredibly important.

Jacqueline King: We have officers who are now located in Cairns, Townsville, Bundaberg, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Toowoomba, and Brisbane. And so they're on the ground, out there in workplaces. They're also accessing a lot of migrant communities and community organisations, as well as others such as international students, PALM workers, and the like.

Jacqueline King: So our submission itself draws—this is from January this year—it draws on a number of particular case studies that has only built over that time since then with those people on the ground. So that program employs 10 people, so it's quite substantive to be able to get an outreach to temporary visa holders and get what their experiences are and what we are seeing across a range of industries in Queensland. So from manufacturing to construction, to agriculture, to hospitality, to meat processing. There might be some—aged care and health, sorry, and education are also large industries that employ temporary visa holders.

Jacqueline King: There are large variances of experiences between the temporary visa holders, but there is a significant amount of exploitation that we are coming across on a daily basis. And when I say exploitation, I mean things like underpayment of wages, underpayment of superannuation, unsafe work practices, discrimination practices, substandard accommodation, and all of the things that I think we have seen for quite a series of decades to do with migrant labour when migrant labour is coming to Australia.

Jacqueline King: They are the things that are, I guess, informing us. In terms of Queensland as well, we are like many, many states, but I think we have significant differences from our 2032 Olympic infrastructure demand. Queensland is a growing state; our population continues to grow. That has put enormous pressure on our housing in Brisbane, but also particularly in the regions. And when I mean housing, I mean available housing that is suitable for Australian workers and their families, as well as the rest of the communities, let alone for bringing in migrant labour into regional communities or where we have large infrastructure projects going into a regional community.

Jacqueline King: So a lot of accommodation—we're looking at rental accommodation, minus 1% vacancy rates, etc., which is causing enormous stress in the system. At the same time, we have demands on the system because of population growth to expand and grow our hospital services, our education, our energy infrastructure right across the board. And, you know, we've kind of got a bit of a collision of events that are happening. So we've got increased population demand for services; we've got Olympic and Paralympic infrastructure demands that's occurring on us.

Jacqueline King: At the same time, I think we need to be thinking from our perspective—from a Queensland Council of Unions perspective—our message is very strongly that the first point of principle for anything to do with migration is, from a Queensland perspective, that Queenslanders should be able to access Queensland jobs and Queensland training opportunities in the first instance.

Jacqueline King: So our first call for the state government, but also to the federal government—and preferably having a tripartite approach because of the important role that local government plays in Queensland given its regionality—is that there is a tripartite approach to how do we actually grow and build the skills for Queenslanders to meet those skill shortage needs up until 2032 and obviously beyond, but that's the stage where we have significant pressure in the system.

Jacqueline King: Just two examples: we are going to need 46,000 additional healthcare workers—so that's doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals—by 2032 for Queensland alone. In 2027–2028, the construction workforce is expected to peak, and we will need around another 38,000 construction workers, currently facing a deficit of about 17,000 every year in that sector, and mainly because of the competing demands of different infrastructure, and we've also got pressures from competing demands of infrastructure interstate. So there's abnormal kind of demand, so to speak, in the system.

Jacqueline King: In that environment, obviously the issue of skilled migration comes up, and so for us it's how do we actually put some parameters around that. So as I said, first of all, there needs to be, I think, a lot better coordination state and national—the federal and state governments working better together around a workforce development strategy for Queensland that addresses these issues. So the skills and training portfolios of both the federal and state government working together about how do we address these issues.

Jacqueline King: For instance, for apprentices, we have in the construction industry across the board, there is almost half—there's a half dropout or non-retention rate. There are obvious answers to some of this where there has been years and years of research done and it continues to be the same: it is the poor and the low standard of wages. So currently an apprentice on an award as an 18-year-old is getting the same as what an 18-year-old is working in the fast-food industry. And as we know, the junior rates have been phased out of those industries, so it will get worse.

Jacqueline King: We have issues around how do we actually keep them, and so we've had different models over time which are focused on providing pastoral care and providing mentoring to young people coming into those jobs. We should be looking at all of those, but we should be doing it in a cohesive way that focuses on the specific industry: the construction industry, the health industry. There are people who are—we are not retaining people in the health industry or education because of things like occupational violence, excessive workloads. We have police officers who are leaving their jobs for similar reasons: excessive workloads, exposure to trauma. We need to be addressing the whole of what is actually happening in the Australian workforce and think about what then are the connections, because if we think about migration by itself, it simply means it's just another, well, we can pull people off a shelf and we can put them into the system.

Jacqueline King: The system has to be a holistic approach to how do we manage the skills and workforce development for Australia, of which skilled migration has a part. And I think it's from that lens that we would prefer to look at things. And if I've over-egged that, I have done that intentionally. We should be training Queenslanders first, and skilled migration should only be used strategically and where there are demonstrable and real skill shortages. And for that, I think the role of Jobs and Skills Australia, which is one of the ACTU's key recommendations, that they should take an overarching look at where does migration and skilled migration fit into the whole Australian skills picture, should be the centerpiece.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Wind up a bit...

Jacqueline King: Yep, I was just about to say, so I'll wind up.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): We have your submission, so we've got it all in writing.

Jacqueline King: Yeah. So the only other things that I would say in terms of the ACTU submissions is really about trying to—we know that the review of the Workplace Justice Visa process is underway. We are supportive of extending that and making sure that those protections and those entitlements are available to a wider range of temporary visa workers.

Jacqueline King: Our experience of working through our Migrant WorkWise program and through with the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre out of New South Wales, who we partner with, is that that system is working. It just needs to be more promulgated and better known. Having greater visa mobility so workers are not specifically tied to individual employers—that always appears to be a problem when we are faced with exploitation. And I think some of our case studies, while de-identified, go to that.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Questions on the exploitation, which we might be able to thresh out a bit more when I ask them.

Jacqueline King: Yep. So I'll leave it at that. As I say, we support the general submissions of the ACTU in that space, but also quite cognisant that we need to be thinking about stuff in terms of what an Australian system has to have: local, and we need to think about from our perspective a Queensland system.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Thank you very much. Thank you for your submission and giving us a bit of an understanding of the Queensland Council of Unions and the issues that you're dealing with. I've got a couple of questions. First one, and I did mention exploitation: you started off by saying there's still quite a bit of exploitation taking place, and that's very concerning. Obviously, if people are bringing people over from overseas for certain sectors and then exploiting them... Could you sort of outline for the committee, is there a particular sector where this is being seen, or is it across the board? You'll always have people not doing the right thing in any sector, but are there any particular sectors where it really stands out?

Jacqueline King: Well, it depends where you are and what are the largest employers within the region, so there are regional kind of issues. But we are seeing it across the state in the construction industry, where we're getting temporary visa holders coming in and being paid $35 an hour on an ABN. That's a Federal Court matter to establish that it's sham contracting. A couple of those workers were found who were sleeping in sleeping bags on the streets in Cairns just two months ago.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): They're contracting work out to different entities?

Jacqueline King: Yes.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Then employing people...

Jacqueline King: And doing sham contracting, yep.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): ...through sham contractors.

Jacqueline King: Yeah. And for someone who's on $35 Australian an hour, they've got to pay their own tax, provide their own tools, all the rest of that side of things. To establish, number one, they've got a visa, so they're very vulnerable, they're fearful of reporting what's actually happening to them. The legal route to address that is a Federal Court matter to address sham contracting, where they have to hire a lawyer, which might cost them all up $30,000 to $50,000 to actually progress a sham contracting matter. So they're common.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): When the sham contractors are exposed by whether it be the union or someone else, is there a response? Is it a positive response when you do go to the... When I mean the authorities, actually worked to shut them down?

Jacqueline King: Not necessarily, because I think on the sham contracting area—and I think it's also rife in the construction industry on the Gold Coast, is a particular area, Gold Coast and Cairns. But for that, the only way to deal with that, we can refer some of them to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Where there's systemic—where we identify systemic cases of it, the Fair Work Ombudsman will take it on, but for individual matters, it is a Federal Court application. So it's problematic for those people to have their issues addressed.

Jacqueline King: We can refer them, and our people will refer them, to the ATO, the employer—that the employer is not paying the appropriate tax. They're often not getting their superannuation, again which is the ATO. So there are processes, but it's quite involved and quite complex for some of them.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Would you say these—the main contractor would be aware of these ongoing...

Jacqueline King: Generally, yes.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): They are.

Jacqueline King: Yes.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): So therefore, that would be, for them, obviously they're trying to get their prices down as low as possible. It would be...

Jacqueline King: They're looking at migrant labour as a reduced wage factor on their books, basically, and less risk in terms of liability if they're able to push them off onto an ABN. Long term, the liability is greater if they're found to be sham contracting, but because of the nature of the fact that most migrant workers won't report something that's happening—number one, they don't know, they don't understand what their rights are, so there's a lack of education, and then there's a lack of reporting because they don't know who to talk to about these things.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Having these visas connected to their employment makes it difficult for them to speak out.

Jacqueline King: Yes. And then we're seeing other things on the Gold Coast in the construction industry—I don't want to make it just about them, because it's not—but the use of international students. Those students would be in breach of their work conditions on their visas, but they're being used in the construction industry up to 60 hours a week. So I don't know how they're doing their education at the same time, but these things are happening.

Jacqueline King: We certainly referred matters when we came across some issues with JBS at Dinmore. We referred those to the department in terms of—that's only probably three months ago—in terms of potential, what we believed was potential misuse of student visas to bring in trainee managers from Brazil for that site, but also at the same time looking at the number of visa workers. The site itself at Dinmore had grown over 50% in 12 months, and it was all temporary visa holders. And, you know, really questioning: has there been any labour market testing? There is a high youth unemployment rate in the Ipswich region, but everything that we were being told by local job service providers was that they were being told there's nothing here. So you've got large employers operating in Australia who aren't offering entry-level apprenticeship or traineeship positions and then going to wholesale migrant labour, and you've got to ask the reasons why.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): That takes me to my last question, but just on that point: there's been some discussion and people have been telling us that we should tie apprenticeships to migrant workers. In other words, for every X amount of workers that you bring over, the company must employ maybe one for every 10 or 15 or 20 local apprentices. What are your views on that in terms of having it tied to the—and it would only work for the very, very big, I suppose, the big construction, big companies that employ on their sites quite a few?

Jacqueline King: Well, we've always supported ratios for apprentices, but I'm going to just focus maybe on we need to employ local apprentices. So I know Master Builders Australia, the MBA, have been advocating for the introduction of a building and construction industry apprentice pathway for migrant workers. That would be disastrous from our perspective. We're basically giving up on Queenslanders and Australians actually getting a job in that space and targeting overseas workers to come in and work at 50% of a tradesperson's wages. That's where they would start because they'd be sitting on the award rate of pay. They're more than likely to be placed with a group training company that's also an apprenticeship company, meaning that they're likely to be moved around on different jobs. The likelihood of them getting past one year into their apprenticeship is very low in terms of that everything has actually gone right. I think that would completely undermine our apprenticeship scheme.

Jacqueline King: In terms of making positive measures to ensure that Australian employers or employers in Australia are actually employing local apprentices, absolutely. Where governments can do that through procurement policies—we've seen that as effective in the past here in Queensland. Unfortunately, they've just abolished the 15% Building and Construction Industry Training Policy for government infrastructure projects, which is kind of ludicrous from our perspective given the current skill shortage environment. They haven't replaced it with anything other than employer apprentice incentives, which have been available, and there's nothing wrong with employer incentives in that space, but it fundamentally doesn't address the reasons why an industry doesn't train.

Jacqueline King: So we need to find mechanisms, whether it's the health industry, whether it's aged care, whether it's construction, for them to buy into their responsibilities as an industry to actually train up the next workforce. So whether that's trainees, apprentices, graduates, wherever that workforce is needed. And that's where we need to come back to having workforce development plans at an overarching level, which governments have responsibilities for bringing parties together from industry, but then down at an industry level to drive some of these things. And if it's procurement or it's commitments from employers...

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): It can be done.

Jacqueline King: It can be done. We used to have it in federal awards until 1996. I've been around this for three decades, and I remember the 1996 changes that happened under the John Howard government. It removed ratios for apprentices and trainees in awards. It removed that tradesperson to apprentice ratios, where you either had a tradesperson could supervise up to three or up to five apprentices. It removed all of those things that worked in the favour of actually structured training for workplaces, and it didn't replace it with anything. And since then, we've seen less apprentices, less completions. Over time, the whole system has sort of undermined—not just because of that, there's a whole range of factors—but I think we need to bring it back to how do we create an Australian and a Queensland workforce that's suitable for what our needs are, and we should be putting Australians and Queenslanders in the middle of that. Skilled migration is an important part, it's played an important part and should continue to do that, but I think there are other factors in terms of regional Australia such as lack of housing that needs to be addressed...

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): And a whole range of other...

Jacqueline King: ...and a whole range of others, yeah.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): I think Deputy Chair has the floor.

Leon Rebello MP (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Chair. I'd like to turn to regional labour shortages, and you've spoken about some of the issues in Queensland. In your opinion, are regional labour shortages mainly skilled, semi-skilled, or low-skilled?

Jacqueline King: Depends on the industry, but I think it's probably a combination of them. But when we talk about low-skilled regional vacancies, I think you've got to start to ask the question: are those vacancies actually being driven by the fact that there are either low wages, they're unsafe industries, or it's insecure employment—like they're highly casualised, etc.—and people aren't interested in working in that? Which is when I go back to the point that we can't just consider, "Oh, is there a shortage because we advertised and we advertised at really low rates of pay, we didn't get anyone, so therefore let's go in and we'll offer a migrant worker even lower, 10% off, if we can get that on the regional rates of pay?"

Leon Rebello MP (Deputy Chair): And are there any particular areas or shortages that you think—again staying on the topic of regional workforce shortages—that you think are not adequately addressed by our skilled migration program at the moment? Are there any obvious gaps?

Jacqueline King: I think the PALM worker scheme could be—I know there's current commentary in the media around the PALM worker scheme and the 457, the backpacker visa. Sorry, I didn't get that right... not the proper terminology for it. But I think we come across a lot of PALM workers, and Queensland has the largest amount of PALM workers of any state. So at any time, we have between 12,500 to 15,000 PALM workers who are here. A lot of those people are seeking better hours, more security, less seasonal. Some of them come with the seasons, but some of them are here throughout the year, so it goes from that 12,500 to 15,000. So there's still a base that is there.

Jacqueline King: So I think we could look at the PALMs in terms of that. The fact that PALM workers don't get access to our Medicare scheme while they're here, we're coming across lots of stories of major health issues, workers being terminated because they're pregnant, they can't go home, they get stuck in the system here, they have no access to healthcare, all of that. I think that we need to be considering the people that we've given commitments to that are already here before we start advertising and saying, "Come to Australia and you can come and you can come and do those jobs and create competition."

Jacqueline King: We don't need competition between backpacker visas and PALM workers. I think for some industries, the PALM workers are very suitable, and they need better security and better support and better standards of accommodation, because that's the other thing we see particularly for them.

Leon Rebello MP (Deputy Chair): And the other question I had: you spoke about the deficits in terms of the number of workers in certain areas, and in particular I think you mentioned construction workers, I think 17,000 deficit per year. During our hearings on Friday, we heard from one of the witnesses that if you take our total net overseas migration, the amount of people that are coming through that work in the construction industry was around the 4% mark. Do you think, just looking at that and from your experience in Queensland, if you look at over the last few years our migration system, have you got any indications that, well, firstly, do you think it's working, it's fit for purpose at the moment? But secondly, have you seen any changes that have worked to address any of these issues in aligning the need with our migration system?

Jacqueline King: So, sorry, I'm just trying to think of a short way to answer it. I mean, I guess I've seen this over three decades, and at a time when we have pressures for migrant workers who want to come here. So my last experience of this was the GFC, when there was lots of migrant workers coming to Queensland and coming to Australia. The problems that occurred then were happening. So my experience was working in electrical and the power field and seeing Irish electricians coming into the country and having their passports taken from them, living in triple bunks in beds in Airlie Beach, and working as, you know, doing unlicensed electrical work when they weren't licensed because they hadn't been given access to do the skills assessments.

Jacqueline King: When I thought of that happening at that time, the automatic comparison in my mind is to what would be happening to a worker in the agriculture industry or the meat industry or wherever, right? So I think these things happen and they come in waves, and the things that we should be thinking about is: how do we train—I'm going to go back to principles—how do we train and get an Australian workforce and plan for that over a period of time? You don't create tradespeople even in a 4-year apprenticeship; they become productive over 7 years.

Jacqueline King: But for employers and governments to say, "Well, that's just too difficult, we're not going to do that, let's open up and create a specialist building and construction industry pathway," is basically letting down Australian workers, and it's letting down our communities because these are jobs for the future and for our children as well. So we need to be thinking always about that. But I think there will always be waxing and waning in the migration system depending on decisions of government, international events, etc.

Jacqueline King: The best thing that we could do to protect workers from being exploited, which is the same thing as stopping migrant workers or the use of migrant workers from undermining Australian wages and conditions, is to make sure that we have better compliance and better optics over what's going on. I'll give you one example in the aged care, and you probably—if you haven't already heard from the ANMF, I know their submissions are in—but, for instance, in the aged care labour agreements, there is a requirement for an aged care employer to sign and enter into a memorandum of understanding with the relevant union about access and induction.

Jacqueline King: So what we are seeing from Migrant WorkWise is we are going into non-union workplaces—we're not there to recruit people, we're there to provide education and information—but in a similar way, the ANMF and other unions are able to go in in an induction and basically provide the essential information about what their rights and entitlements are. These people don't even know that they're entitled to the same wages and conditions of employment as Australian workers. So how would they know how to navigate, "Well, my employer hasn't paid my superannuation"? How would they even know about payday super that started on the 1st of July, right?

Jacqueline King: So there's this huge education component, and then there's also cultural issues about fear of engagement with governments and institutional bodies, including unions and employers. They're very fearful of having their visas taken off them. So as much protection around that visa so that, that's where we're seeing the exploitation, and that ability to be able to not necessarily have your visa, have your job, your accommodation, and if it's training as well, all hooked to the same person. That creates additional vulnerability.

Jacqueline King: So I think that some review in the system about where that visa is connected to... I think we gave something in our submissions around some of the regional skilled visas so that you've got some requirements about where the connection is, but you've broken the nexus with an individual employer. Where the individual employer has that power, that is often where we find the exploitation, because it's about power and control.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Mr Caldwell.

Cameron Caldwell MP: Thanks, Mr Chair. Thanks, Ms King. Love the pro-Queensland attitude. So your primary roles are obviously in relation to workers, you know, wages, conditions...

Jacqueline King: Safety.

Cameron Caldwell MP: ...way of life, safety. Do you think there's a tipping point where migration intake tips over to there being too much—and I think you mentioned it in your opening—too much of a pressure on our infrastructure and housing that outweighs whatever the economic benefit of the migration program is? Can you just flesh that out for us a little bit?

Jacqueline King: Sure. So I'm not going to talk about what I think caps should be or anything like that, but definitely we are seeing the pressure in Queensland on the ground. We already have interstate migration levels that have been continuing since COVID, so our population growth, that's significant, and particularly in a regional state where you're not just looking at one large city, you're looking at all of these different outposts of regional cities, regional communities, rural.

Jacqueline King: I live part-time in a rural community, and I see what the pressures are like in those places. So I do understand that they find it difficult to employ people, but when they want to employ on the minimum award, or they are known to be a person who doesn't pay penalty rates even though that's the law, or someone is doing an ABN—I could list three in my local community that I'm aware of from people that I know that are Australians—then if you introduce migrant labour onto that, then you know that that's going to be happening in that space.

Jacqueline King: I've drifted a little bit, but I think there's got to be a balance. And if an employer is going to—and if that means the state government is funding large infrastructure projects into the regions, or an employer is going to build large hotels or whatever that requires a massive influx of workers, whether that's Queenslanders, Australian workers, or migrant workers, there has to be consideration given to those local communities about accommodation.

Jacqueline King: And what are the other effects, right? Because I grew up with parents who were schoolteachers, and we did the western New South Wales route as I was a kid, and a family would move out of a two-teacher school, which will become a one-teacher school overnight, and the impact on that local community is quite large. But when someone else moves in and then you have to upskill in that space, it is an infrastructure need. So our education, the impact on hospitals and our services, the ambulance ramping—all of it in our view is connected, right?

Jacqueline King: It is all about population growth, and it is all a lack of planning, successive planning, successive governments—I think state, federal—in terms of looking at what does this actually mean for people in those areas. And I think the whole immigration debate at the moment is a lot of frustration coming from people because they don't believe that their needs are being listened to by either major political party. And I'm not suggesting here that I support that, but I also empathise that's how they feel, because they're living in it every day and wondering how it's going to end. When will it get better for ordinary Queenslanders?

Cameron Caldwell MP: I know the Chair is going to wrap me up shortly, so just quickly: you talked a little bit about wage stagnation being sort of an indicia of where there might be about need or lack of need for migration. Can you just flesh that out a little bit more? In what way do you think that is an indicator or not an indicator of the need for skilled migrant workforce to top up?

Jacqueline King: In terms of wages?

Cameron Caldwell MP: Yeah.

Jacqueline King: Well, so we often see you'll get migrant labour will be coming in at high levels, so your engineers, your medical professionals, doctors, etc., and that's driving a lot of it. But then there's often a big gap in the middle of that, and so you'll see a lot of it is coming in at minimum wage, they're not recruiting into—so outside of the professions and some of the trades, this is where our concerns are about the low-skilled, is that it will come in at minimum wage. And when it comes in at minimum wage, they're not being paid, as I said before, they're not paying Australian workers, they're not compliant with paying their super, paying their overtime, paying penalty rates. Migrant workers don't even understand that they have those same rights in that space, and so it will drive what is actually happening.

Jacqueline King: So you'll see the effect of: we'll advertise at a certain wage rate, and people won't apply for the jobs locally because the wage rates are out of kilter. We've had examples—unions telling me examples, so second-hand a bit to clarify—that a large meat industry employer had just gets around the advertising things by having a standing ad on Seek. They're big enough, they're an Australian firm, they can just do a rolling, and that gets them out of the local kind of advertising.

Jacqueline King: So there's a whole range of factors that are in there, and I think that if you just go out and do that, then you're not being genuine, right? Where's your commitment to actually signing up the young people who are leaving school, offering them the traineeships and the apprenticeships, not ditching your workforce completely over a 20-year period to go to 90% migrant labour? Like, that's crazy to me, right?

Jacqueline King: Don't have a problem with supplementary labour, don't have a problem with it coming in and out and waxing and waning if we've got unemployment issues or whatnot. But when you've got a whole industry that's trying to shift itself to migrant labour, that's about driving down Australian wages and conditions, displacing Australian jobs, and about undermining the actual employment system itself.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Thank you. Just one... In terms of the way that we do migration, and if you go back from 1949 when we brought in a program of a structured migration policy, governments of all persuasions looked at what the needs of the country were and you brought people in immediately on permanent residency basis. There was no work visas or labour migration or it was basically, "Here's our needs: we need 50,000, 40,000, 10,000 factory hands, 15,000 construction workers." So you'd work out your quota for the year, they would come in immediately on a PR, give them the opportunity to become Australians very quickly.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): And we've gone from that in 1949 to this massive, complicated labyrinth of Byzantium laneways and connections, which complicates it. Some people are of the view that we go back to that system where we work out what our needs are for the next 4–5 years, bring people over, they know then that they have certainty, they also know that they have the opportunity to become Australians as well and be part of our community. Is that too simplified, that view?

Jacqueline King: It may be too simplified, but there is merit in it because I think the complexity of the migration system is too much for most people to understand how to navigate, let alone for an ordinary Australian to understand how that system works and impacts.

Jacqueline King: I think the option of more secure jobs—from an Australian worker, is the same as having a secure visa. So if people know that they've got some security with their visa, and they're not linked to the individual employer, that takes away that risk of exploitation in that space.

Jacqueline King: So I definitely think from our perspective, you know, it should be: train Queenslanders first. Second option is where there is identifiable skills shortages and needs, then we go to migrant labour. But that requires, I think, careful thought and planning, which is back to what you were saying: where we know there's an industry that is experiencing particular issues, what is the industry doing, and where is government, and what are the mechanisms that government can bring to that equation about training and workforce development, of which migrant labour is only a part, right?

Jacqueline King: And then I think we should be doing something—just my last plea: please do something about fixing the PALM worker scheme in the sense of giving them better rights and the same sort of visa rights as even current temporary visa holders. They are the most vulnerable, I think, of anyone, and they are our neighbours, and we're relying on them to come and fill our industries—in particular aged care, in particular horticulture and agriculture, and some others. But these are people that we should not be exploiting. We shouldn't be exploiting any migrant labour, but to go to the most vulnerable tells a lot about a country.

Steve Georganas MP (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms King, for your submission and for appearing before us today. If you've been asked to provide any additional information, which I don't think you have, but if there is something you want to send through that perhaps you didn't raise today or wasn't asked, please send it through the secretariat by Friday, 2nd of October 2026. You'll also be sent a transcript of today's evidence, of your evidence, and you'll also have an opportunity to request corrections to any transcription errors you think may have been made. On that note, thank you very much for appearing before the committee.

Jacqueline King: Okay. Thank you.