Australia is perceived as a middle-class country. It is this conception of wealth and comfort that inspires migrants from countries around the world to come to Australia for work, study and, for the lucky, the opportunity to make Australia their permanent home.
Yet this perception of comfort belies a torrid history of exploitation and class conflict. Since colonisation, Australia has brought workers to our shores under exploitative or slave-like conditions, including convicts from the United Kingdom and Pacific Islanders from the British colonies.
That up to one in ten Australian jobs are now performed by temporary migrants demonstrates a continuation of our past abuse and commitment to privileging capital over worker rights. Coupled with the rise of temporary and insecure work, our reputation as a human and labour rights leader is now under threat.
In 2016 the Senate Standing Committee inquiry produced a report titled A National Disgrace: The exploitation of temporary work visa holders, which provides insight into the plight of foreign workers in Australia. According to the Senate President's report to Parliament, tabled on 13 August, the government is still considering their response.
In a positive move which arose out of the 7-Eleven scandal exposed by Fairfax, which impacted evidence to the Inquiry, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) 2017 was introduced. This act introduces liability for franchisors for the behaviour of franchisees toward employees and increases the powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman. Despite this move forward, most of the Inquiry recommendations have fallen by the wayside.
In recent weeks, researchers released results from a survey of workers across a range of industries and visa types including international students, temporary work visas and backpackers to create a picture of how widespread wage theft is among our foreign workforce.
The Wage Theft in Silence survey found that exploitation is rife, with one in three respondents earning $12 an hour or less in some jobs, approximately half the minimum wage. Many respondents earned $15 or less an hour.
"We need to recognise the value in a healthy society of limits to greed and excess lest we be swallowed up by our own rapacity."
According to the survey report, 'The scale of un-remedied underpayment of migrant workers in Australia is vast. This was clearly demonstrated by 7-Eleven's internal wage repayment program which alone repaid more than $150 million in unpaid wages to its mostly international student workforce.'
However, it is not ignorance of Australian law that is fuelling this level of abuse. According to the survey, workers understood they were being substantially underpaid, but knew that to protest this would result in unemployment and threaten their right to work in Australia.
A few years ago, desperate not to have to apply for the dole, I responded to an advertisement on a popular recruitment site for charity fundraising. As I got chatting with one of several backpackers waiting for the information session to begin, a disturbing story emerged.
A young woman from the UK told me she had worked in this job previously and had collapsed and ended up in hospital suffering dehydration. As is the daily practice, she had been dropped out in the suburbs without water or personal effects and expected to door-knock endlessly in the summer heat until the van would come back to pick up the exhausted fundraisers in the early evening. They were often working outside the hours that door-knocking is legal.
Such shameless practices reflect an unwillingness to impose limits on the free market and are likely to go unchecked under a government inspired by the prosperity doctrine. Looking back to the industrial revolution, the only limit to the demands of the free market were dictated by religious observance of the Sabbath. By the time Adam Smith's ideology gained popularity, consumption and self-interest had become a guiding principle in Western economic culture.
Wrote Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776): 'Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the welfare of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.'
The culture of greed in labour exploitation is confirmed by a QLD farm manager contacted for comment: 'Farms are profitable. While not all farmers are wealthy, the joke is you see farmers that look poor but drive a very nice car ... I think the fundamental driver of exploitation in agriculture is greed, with farms justifying it as being needed due to seasonality.'
In allowing and rewarding excesses in human nature we now face serious challenges to our health, environment and quality of life. We need to recognise the value in a healthy society of limits to greed and excess lest we be swallowed up by our own rapacity.
Rosie Williams is an investigative and technology journalist with a strong interest in inequality and civil rights. She has a degree in sociology and significant experience with poverty due to a lifetime of disadvantage.