Malcolm Turnbull has declared Bill Shorten a rank opportunist and hypocrite for his crackdown on 457 visas while opposing a higher tax on backpackers who are on working holiday visas.
The prime minister said the highest number of 457 visas were granted when the opposition leader was the employment minister (between December 2011 and July 2013).
Turnbull said about one third more 457 visas were granted when Shorten was employment minister than in the past 12 months.
“Bill Shorten was in the Olympic grade of granting 457 visas,” Turnbull said. “In terms of the construction sector, he granted twice as many 457 visas when he was minister as are being granted at the moment. He was particularly good at bringing 457 visa workers into the construction sector.
“There’s about half a million [backpacker and student] visas granted each year. These are 417 visas, Mr Shorten wants them to pay no tax at all.
“This leader of the opposition is a rank opportunist. He is completely hypocritical on this issue. Nobody has been better at granting 457 visas than him.”
Under the 457 visa class, people can live and work in Australia for up to four years and, while they are free to move between states and regions, new employers have to be approved to sponsor. The future of the tax rate for 417 visa holders, for young holidaymakers or backpackers, remains uncertain as the Coalition and Labor argue about the rate.
Labor is seeking to crack down on the program to force employers to advertise in local markets for jobs for minimum time periods, conduct labour market testing and ban job ads targeting overseas workers or specific visa classes.
John Howard’s government introduced the visa class in 1996 and the figures show peaks in the total number of visas issued in 2007 and 2012-13.
The Coalition government says 457 visas hit a record high under Shorten as employment minister in 2012-13 with 68,481 primary 457 visas granted in 2012-13. The number of 457 visas granted has declined by 34% from their peak in 2012-13 to 2015-16.
In the construction industry, immigration figures show 457 visas in the construction industry dropped from 9159 in 2011-2012 to 2996 in 2015-16.
Shorten said Turnbull’s attack showed he was out of touch and did not take into account the mining boom and a lower unemployment rate four years ago.
“How out of touch is Malcolm Turnbull if he hasn’t worked out that the world has changed?” Shorten said.
“Labor is saying that we need to toughen the rules. We toughened the rules even back then. It was I who pushed for labour market testing and making sure that the regulators, we had a tough cop on the beat.”
The Gillard government introduced a migration act to tighten up the 457 visa class in 2013, saying it was time “to stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back”. Gillard said the program was “riddled full of rorts” and the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accused her of “dog whistle” politics.
Speaking against the temporary sponsored visas bill, the then immigration minister, Scott Morrison, said it was an attack on “those who come to Australia the right way to divert attention from this government’s failure to do anything about those who come the wrong way, illegally by boat”.
“These measures are designed not to improve the 457 skilled migration program, which is so important to this country, but to choke that program at the behest of the unions, choking the scheme with union red tape,” Morrison said.
“This bill – and the reckless rhetoric of the prime minister and the minister for immigration and citizenship and those from that side of the House who also decided to join in – ends decades of bipartisan support for skilled migration in this country. It goes against the grain of our immigration tradition.”
