Joanna Howe

Is the Net Cast Too Wide? An Assessment of Whether the Regulatory Design of the 457 Visa Meets Australia's Skill Needs

With increasing use of skilled temporary migration by employers and its significant influence upon Australias permanent migration intake, the 457 visa has far-reaching implications — both for the domestic labour market and for the long-term composition of the Australian population. The scheme was introduced in 1996 to facilitate the temporary migration of skilled overseas workers to alleviate domestic skill shortages. Predicated upon a premise of business demand, the scheme allows employers to sponsor overseas workers whose occupations are on the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List. Verification of whether the employers attestation of a skill shortage is genuine is provided through employer-conducted labour market testing for certain occupations and the market salary rates requirement. This article questions whether these regulatory mechanisms are effective for ensuring the 457 visa program meets its objectives.

Examining a Temporary Migrant Worker's Ability to Make a Complaint of Sexual Harassment

Australia’s migration landscape has been transformed in the past two decades. Although Australia was initially founded upon a culture of permanent migration, built upon ideas of nation-building and citizenship, temporary labour migration has now become the norm. There are over one million migrants with work rights temporarily residing in Australia. Although Australia has only one primary pathway for temporary migrant workers, namely the subclass 457 visa, a number of other visas provide opportunities for temporary migrants to perform work in the domestic labour market. Both international students and working holiday makers have work rights, and a significant amount of unskilled and low skilled work is done by temporary migrants on these visas.

Scrutinising parliament's scrutiny of delegated legislative power

ABSTRACT Delegation of legislative power to the Executive occupies a unique place within the constitutional division of power. As a matter of necessity, efficiency, responsiveness, and a desire for increased participation from industry, delegation of legislative power is common but surprisingly under-theorised and under-studied. For decades in Australia it has been the domain of the Parliament to determine the appropriate exercise and level of scrutiny for delegated legislative power. But the constitutional landscape may be changing. In the 2012 decision Williams v Commonwealth (No 1), the Australian High Court indicated a greater willingness to scrutinise more robustly the performance of Parliaments supervisory functions. Against the background of the Courts new interest in responsible government, we argue that the current parliamentary practice of review of the exercise of delegated power is unable to achieve robust accountability. Informed by the High Courts jurisprudence in Williams (No 1) and the theories of responsible government and separation of powers, we suggest reforms that will ensure Parliament is meeting its constitutional duty of calling the Executive to account to it and, ultimately, the people.

Working holiday makers in Australian horticulture: labour market effect, exploitation and avenues for reform

ABSTRACT Using a mixed-method analysis, this paper examines the effect of working holiday makers (WHMs) on the labour market for low-skilled work in the horticulture industry. Since the inception of the WHM visa in 1975, the horticulture industry has come to rely increasingly on WHMs as the core source of labour for picking and packing fruit and vegetables. This reliance has altered employers’ expectations of labour flexibility, cost and productivity and has limited the role of local workers in the industry in many locations. At the same time, there is evidence of widespread exploitation of WHMs in the industry. There is a difficult policy challenge of how to address the problems of exploitation while maintaining a reliable labour supply for the industry. The article draws on the growing literature considering the role of temporary labour migration on national labour markets to frame the analysis of WHMs in Australian horticulture, and concludes with suggestions for how the horticulture labour market can be reformed through appropriate, targeted regulation of temporary migrants in the industry.