High Court Rules Foreign Offshore Workers Need to have Australian Work Visa

High Court Rules Foreign Offshore Workers Need to have Australian Work Visa https://www.workpermit.com/news/foreign-offshore-workers-must-have-australian-work-visa-high-court-rules-20161106

High Court Rules Foreign Offshore Workers Need to have Australian Work Visa The High Court of Australia has ruled that offshore workers from overseas, who are working on the vessels that operate in the booming offshore resource industry, need to have an Australian work visa and must also get minimum pay and conditions. The decision comes as a rather unpleasant blow to Mr Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of Australia. An example of an Australian work visa is the 457 visa, which is one of the most popular visas among aspiring visa applicants.

The ruling was delivered on the 31^st of August, and it overturned the reforms of the government which essentially gave permission to workers to be employed on certain vessels without having to acquire an Australian work visa. The High Court has decided that Mr Petter Dutton, the Minister for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, has exceeded his authority by sanctioning exemptions from the migration zone of Australia.

Local Jobs will be protected because of Court Ruling according to Unions

Australian Maritime workers consider the ruling of the High Court as good news, saying that local jobs will be protected because of it. At the same time, the exploitation of cheap foreign labour will also be prevented, as it had become rampant all over the offshore oil and gas industry that’s easily worth $200 billion.

”The key outcome is it puts a stop to the government’s attempts to undermine the jobs of Australian seafarers in the offshore oil and gas industry, which is what they did by opening up the industry to foreign labour,” said the secretary for the Maritime Union of Australia, Mr Will Tracey.

Case of DIBP to make it easier for workers offshore

The Australian Federal Government decided last year to make an exemption on specialised foreign workers from getting an Australian work visa to work on some offshore oil and gas rigs. Because of this, there were certain reforms introduced by the Gillard Labor government which ultimately extended requirements for an Australian work visa to work on these particular rigs, making them part of the country’s migration zone.

”The exemptions had been made to protect jobs and solidify the future of Australia’s offshore resources industry,” stated Mr Dutton after the release of the High Court’s ruling. ”The decision is disappointing.”

”Many of these vessels operate in international waters and never enter an Australian port, however, following the High Court ruling, workers on these vessels will now have to apply for and gain an Australian work visa before they can work within the offshore resource sector,” Mr Dutton further went on to say.

According to the Immigration minister, deciding to overturn the reforms of the recent government will ‘create more red tape, increase costs for the industry, while reducing the overall competitiveness’ of what Mr Dutton says as one of the ‘biggest export earners’ of the country.

Union officials who represent workers all over the industry argued however, that the decision of the Turnbull government to make exemptions to foreign staff from requiring an Australian work visa is an incentive for companies to hire foreign labour for a very cheap price, while safety standards and working conditions are ignored.

The representatives of the Union stated that the tedious legal challenge against the reforms of the Turnbull government was a problem that answers the question of ‘Australians having the right to work in their own offshore industry.’

”The Abbott and Turnbull governments made ‘sloppy and repeated’ attempts to exclude any requirements for foreign workers on certain offshore projects to hold work visas, even though they were working in Australian waters,” stated the Australian Maritime Officers’ Union, the representative of masters and deck officers.

The ruling, according to a Union industrial officer, Mr Jarrod Moran, was a huge win for workers. He believes that the outcome means in order for an individual to work in Australian waters, ‘you must be an Australian or have Australian work rights.’

Australian workers’ Skills and Experience

According to Mr Moran, over 170 members of the officers’ union did not have jobs at the present, in spite of the fact that they all had the skills and the experience needed to fulfill the job on offshore vessels. It was also revealed by the Maritime Union of Australia that over a thousand workers were presently jobless.

Mr Brent Warhurst, an experienced captain, said that following a recent redundancy from his role on a tanker belonging to Shell, he suddenly became unemployed. ”I am hoping for a job soon,” he said. ”It has been extremely difficult to find work out there. I am a father of 2 small children, with a house and a mortgage. It has been a long slog.”

The Labor government was criticised by Mr Dutton, saying that Labor gave in to the pressure of its union masters’ demands at the expense of the national economic interest’s preservation when the migration zone of Australia was being extended to include in the offshore resources industry non-citizens back in 2013.