Barnaby Joyce has delivered a strong defence of the 457 visa program and its importance to regional Australia, saying temporary workers are essential to fill demand for jobs such as doctors and meatworkers.  In the face of strident criticism of the program from fellow National MP George Christensen and Labor, Joyce wrote in an article for Guardian Australia that such workers were a benefit not a threat.  “The first thing that all Australians would love in their town is an Australian doctor,” Joyce wrote.  “And if they can’t get an Australian doctor, the next best thing is a foreign doctor. It’s a real worry for people in regional Australia that if you or your child gets sick, there simply is no doctor there.  “Now the Australian Medical Association might say that there are too many doctors coming on line, but maybe they all live in Double Bay.”  Joyce said while skills for jobs such as abattoir workers and doctors might exist in Australia, those people might not want to move to the areas where their skills were required.  “The only way we can attract people to many of these towns is if the business structure is complete and furnished with all the right skills at all the right levels,” Joyce said.  “And foreign workers are often necessary for that. People in regional towns expect that. There is no animosity.”  In 2013, Labor proposed tightening up the 457 visa system after significant growth in the use of the program by employers.  Before this year’s federal election, Labor proposed a crackdown on foreign workers under the 457 program, promising to implement a mandatory requirement for all jobs to be advertised as part of labour market testing obligations, minimum advertising periods before hiring foreign workers and bans on advertising for foreign workers only.  Bill Shorten then highlighted the policy in a regional tour in the week after Donald Trump won office in the United States.  At the same time, Christensen wrote to Joyce and the ministers for employment and immigration requesting a moratorium on 457s in his Queensland region hardest hit by the mining downturn.  The Coalition announced it was already tightening the rules on 457 visa workers by forcing them to leave Australia within 60 days instead of 90 if they lost their jobs.  But Joyce said the lack of doctors in regional and rural areas infuriated people when there were many doctors in some cities.  “If doctors wanted to spread themselves evenly across the country, then we would all probably be OK,” Joyce said. “But they don’t.”  Apart from health workers such as doctors and nurses, Joyce said abattoir work was unpopular so vacancies were filled by temporary foreign workers who could use the experience to become Australians.  “Do you want to pack offal, or the smelly guts of a cow?” Joyce wrote. “Do you want to bone out skulls, do a bovine form of ‘alas poor Yorick’? No, you don’t.  “Most people would want to work as the accountant at the abattoir or one of the other higher level jobs. But someone has to do these unpopular jobs if the abattoir is to work properly.  “And when people come in from overseas to do it, the town is happy, the abattoir is working, and people have jobs.”  He said in Rockhampton, the number of meat workers on 457 visas had gone down because temporary workers were transitioning to full residency.  “These 457 workers wanted to become Australians and constructive members of the community: buying houses, bringing up their kids,” Joyce wrote. “And that’s exactly what happened.”  He said foreign workers were also necessary because a small number of Australians did not want to work, and he would not want to close down a local abattoir to find out why some did not want to work.  “The overwhelming numbers of Australians want to work, and they work very hard,” Joyce wrote.  “I’m not a social worker being paid to determine why someone thinks that sitting around getting fat and playing video games is a better outcome than having a job.  “And I’m not going to close down the local abattoir by trying to discover a solution or a reason. That’s why I believe in decentralisation – it is an active process of expanding the opportunity and social texture of regional cities and towns. Because people attract people.”
Deputy prime minister says foreign workers are essential to fill jobs in regional areas, particularly in unpopular roles such as in abattoirs