The furore surrounding the approval of the first Enterprise
Migration Agreement is to be expected – it is actually something the Gillard
Government said it would introduce.
Much of the debate really centres around the issue of
whether Australian workers are displaced by the use of EMA’s.
It needs to be understood that Australia has operated a visa
system for a number of years. From time to time, Governments amend the rules
for business migration to meet specific needs in the economy. The new EMA
process merely reflects a more effective means of applying what was a often a
complicated and time consuming process to the realities of large scale multi-billion
dollar projects.
The reality of course is that such projects are owned by
very wealthy individuals or very profitable companies – it really would not
have mattered whose EMA was approved first, it would still have been subject to
considerable opposition.
What is also clear is that we do need a much more effective
system for ensuring that there is no displacement of Australian workers.
Companies which seek to have an EMA must be able to
demonstrate that they processed ALL applications from Australian residents who
seek work on the same projects. It seems somewhat anachronistic that a company
able to develop state of the art extraction and mining processes, cannot
process applications in a timely manner. If companies are unable to do this
then perhaps Government will need to intervene to establish a better system.
Those seeking EMA’s need to be very clear as the commitment
being made to ongoing training to meet future skill needs. This is a
requirement for EMA approval and is likely to be the area where Government
scrutiny will need to be particularly vigilant.
Recent history suggests that the Government has failed to
maintain the standards across industry that are required and it is this focus
which will continue to play out in the political arena.
