The incoming Australian government elected on May 21 will inherit Australia’s dark legacy of entrenched wage theft among migrant workers. It must make a choice.
Its first option is to seize the moment while there are still relatively low numbers of migrant workers in Australia to fix the parts of the system that enable wage theft to flourish. The second option is to continue tinkering around the edges of the problem, and consciously bring hundreds of thousands of young migrants into exploitative underpaid jobs they will likely endure in silence.
It is time for an Australian government to set its sights higher and adopt an evidence-based and systemic approach to tackling migrant exploitation. If Australia is genuinely committed to ensuring labour compliance and curbing forced labour and modern slavery, it cannot afford to miss this opportunity.
Read more in The Conversation.
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