Australian employers who exploit migrant workers will be banned from hiring other visa holders and will face new criminal penalties, as part of a government crackdown.
On Monday the federal government will announce legal changes to tackle what it calls “a crisis of exploitation with up to one in six recent migrants paid less than the minimum wage”.
The changes, to be introduced to parliament within weeks, will include making it a criminal offence to coerce someone into breaching their visa condition. This offence will attract a penalty of up to two years in prison.
The government will also use new prohibition notices to “stop employers from further hiring people on temporary visas where they have exploited migrants”.
In addition to tripling some existing financial penalties, the government will give temporary visa holders who are sponsored by an employer much longer to find a new job. This aims to ease the pressure exploited workers face to stay in poor conditions.
Some visas currently allow a gap of only 60 or 90 days between employer sponsors. The new gap of 180 days aims to make it easier for sponsored migrants to move between employers.
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, said that over the past 10 years the migration system had “drifted deeper and deeper into reliance on low-paid temporary migrant workers who we know are routinely exploited”.
The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, said the planned reforms would help workers speak up and target employers who did the wrong thing.
Giles cited Grattan Institute analysis that up to 16% of employed recently arrived migrants were paid below the national minimum wage as evidence of a crisis.
“When migrant workers are being underpaid – it hurts all of us, driving wages and conditions down for everyone,” he said.
The government will also repeal a section of the Migration Act that says it is an offence for a visa holder to contravene a condition regarding the work they are allowed to do.
This provision will be scrapped because the government and experts argue it actively undermines people reporting exploitative behaviour.
Monday’s announcement will include $50m in funding for the Australian Border Force for enforcement.
The government will also flag further measures in the future. It plans to consult on whistleblower protections for temporary visa holders and ways to strengthen the “firewall” between the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Department of Home Affairs.
The Human Rights Law Centre welcomed the announcement as “a critical shift in the right direction”.
The centre’s managing lawyer, Sanmati Verma, said existing arrangements deterred migrant workers from speaking up about their conditions at work.
Verma said sponsored workers had no visa security to leave their employer and pursue action if they had been mistreated, because the visa was tied to the employer.
“If properly designed and implemented, the visa-based protections for migrant workers will mean that, for the first time, migrant workers will not face visa cancellation or jeopardise their visa if they take action for breaches of workplace law,” Verma said.
“These measures will remove the most obvious causes of migrant worker exploitation that have been built into the migration system over decades.”
In April the government announced broader changes to the migration system.
