Alarm Bells Ringing Over Gina's 1700 Foreign Workers

• General News
• 26th June 2012

Who could forget those 2010 television pictures of poor Gina Rinehart standing on the tray of a flat bed truck moaning on about Kevin Rudd's super mining tax.

"Axe the tax, axe the tax", she chanted, clearing living the dream and seizing her opportunity to act like Big Kev or Joe at a union rally.

Extraordinary stuff, I thought at the time and I wasn't the only one struck by the sheer hypocrisy of the spectacle of a multi-billionaire whinging about having to pay a little extra for the right to keep plundering our non-renewable resources.

My old mate Glenn Sterle, once a furniture removalist and union organiser, now a federal MP, was also gob smacked.

"There she was screaming like a banshee for a fair go for billionaires, wearing a tent and a pearl necklace with pearls big enough to choke a fat pig", he recalled.

Glenn is one of the few Labor MP's to join unions in speaking out publicly against Labor's recent gifting to Gina of the right to bring in 1700 foreign workers to help run her Roy Hill project.

The Roy Hill deal is the first Emergency Migration Agreement approved by the Gillard government. There are lots more waiting for signatures as miners queue for their cheap labour permits.

Gina and her new found mates in the Gillard Government claim the $9 billion project will also create 6700 jobs for locals, including 2000 training places for Australians.

There will also be 230 apprenticeships and 100 jobs for our indigenous people. Or so they say.

They also argue that, without the imported labour, Roy Hill wouldn't get off the ground and that would mean no jobs at all.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable argument on face value but you should never judge a book by its cover and unions are right to express concerns.

Number on fear is that Roy Hill is the thin edge of the wedge that will eventually crack the dam wall wide open and flood Australia with cheap migrant workers.

In fact it's happening already on the Sino Project at Cape Preston in the North West where Chinese workers are being paid less than half of what their Australian counterparts earn.

Make no mistake "cheap labour" are the two key words in this story.

Glenn Sterle recalls the full page advertisements Gina Rineheart and 30 of her wealthy cronies placed in Australian newspapers prior to the 2010 elections.

The adverts called for the creation of "Special Economic Zones"

Under this Grand Plan, potential major mining projects would be "ring-fence" from the rest of the community.

And in these Twilight Zones miners would employ as many foreign workers as they needed and not have to pay them Australian wages.

The rich and rotund would also be freed from such inconveniences as 'high taxes' and 'government red tape'.

When you consider that the average wage in China is not much more than $3000 (AU) per year you can see how attractive overseas labour is to these greedy bludgers.

Not satisfied with earning $52 MILLION A DAY from resources owned by the Australian people Gina wants more.

The future that Gina Rineheart and her mates are mapping out for us is scary and that's why unions such as the TWU have set alarm bells clanging.

Since the controversial Roy Hill announcement, Gillard and Co have given assurances that safeguards will be put in place to ensure Aussies get first grab at the mining jobs!

We remain sceptical about that. And also frightened about what Tony Abbott might do if he wins government now that Labor has opened the cheap labour door.

One thing's for certain: You haven't heard the last about Special Economic Zones or Emergency Migration Agreements.