35 comments

1. harshmindSeptember 7, 2015 at 5:37 am

   Feeling VERY uneasy about this. Big investors in Australia seeing the importation of cheap labour as an avenue to profit. Meanwhile, what do Australian workers do? Oh, that’s right, they look to their elected representatives to look out for them. Bonza, blue

2. babyjewels10September 7, 2015 at 6:10 am

   Aside from anything else, the thought of the Chinese, Reinhart and Harvey investing in dairy farms, all I can think of is, the poor cows. Imagine the shortcuts they’ll be taking to the detriment of the quality of life of cows. Oh I hate big business in animal farming of any kind. It’s bad enough as it is.

3. slorterSeptember 7, 2015 at 6:23 am

   Cost of Labor that’s what it is all about! This global free market is just a racket for the ultra rich; they want the whole world to be run on their whim and the rest of us to descend into some sort of neo feudalism! All you have to do is listen to $2 dollars a day Rinehart!

4. Terry2September 7, 2015 at 6:39 am

   This agreement was concluded hastily to meet the deadline of the G20 in Brisbane when Abbott insisted on signing something with China ; he would have signed the back of an envelope, anything for the photo-op.

   Craig Emerson is quite right that the ChaFTA requires facilitating legislation which can include reference to employment standards – e.g. welders, electricians, engineers etc. obviously need to meet Australian standards including a competence in English.

   It is unacceptable that Abbott is using this agreement to wedge Labor.

5. corvus boreusSeptember 7, 2015 at 6:53 am

   slorter,
   Depends whether you mean Labor or labour.

   ‘Cost of Labor’ is what it is all about for the current government, in terms of repetitious propaganda, aka ‘message’.

   ‘Cost of labour’ (and the tolerance of poor conditions within the workforce) is what it is all about in terms of kow-tow-ing to the demands of Gina and her crony-communist Chinese partners to bring in unskilled workers on 457s.
   It is part of why the TURC attack dogs have been sent in so hard on the CMFEU, who would view un(/der) qualified imports working in their industry on 457 visas as ‘cheap scabs’.

6. Möbius EckoSeptember 7, 2015 at 9:44 am

   Haven’t got it to hand but the waiver for labour market testing is one way. There is a specific passage in the ChAFTA that states China does not have to waiver it’s labour market regulations and restrictions.

   Here’s the rub on that. That passage was put in by Australia, not China.

7. WinstonSeptember 7, 2015 at 10:10 am

   Andrew Robb is an extremely inarticulate human being. Listen to this man intently; he says nothing outside the party line. Barry Cassidy questioned him yesterday that he is being head hunted for a job as ambassador for the United States. More than likely Robb; probably got the rumour going in the first place. Andrew Robb is a thin skinned man of very little consequence or intelligence. The man is unemployable. Really; no one would hire this guy. When he finishes politics or when he’s finished stuffing up our county he will be sitting around bumbling around on pension like Uncle Arthur from The Comedy Company; boring the daylights out of people.

8. Kaye LeeSeptember 7, 2015 at 10:24 am

   Andrew Robb is a self-confessed liar who is almost singlehandedly responsible for scuttling the ETS and giving us Tony Abbott.

   In 2009 he took leave to deal with a mental illness. He came back just in time for the party room debate on the ETS. He was Turnbull’s climate change spokesman and was expected to support his leader’s proposed compromise with Labor. He wrote a note to Malcolm saying “the side-effects of the medication I am on now make me very tired, I’d be really grateful if you could get me to my feet soon”.

   In his book Black Dog Daze, Robb admits this was a deliberate lie. “I knew that if I didn’t say anything, there was no one else [in the opposition] equipped to challenge the proposal.” Under the heading An Act of Treachery, Robb writes “I didn’t feel that good about doing this . . . I was tired, that wasn’t a lie, although I had my share of adrenaline pumping and could have easily sat there for another couple of hours.”

   The ruse worked. “Malcolm called me up and I went for it”, Robb wrote. He received a “standing ovation” and “poked holes all over their proposal”. A week later Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership to Tony Abbott in a coup organised by Robb and the party’s other climate change sceptics.

   If he would lie to his own leader and commit an act of treachery like that, why trust him about the FTA. The man has no ethics.

9. Peter FSeptember 7, 2015 at 10:40 am

   So Gina is investing in Dairy Farms which will use Chinese labour because we don’t have any experienced dairy farmers in Australia. Sounds like the $2/hr pay rate is getting closer than we thought. ( This will be ‘commercial in confidence’)

10. WinstonSeptember 7, 2015 at 11:00 am

    I think many Australians are apathetic or assume persons in government are fine upstanding human beings. I had a great chat with an elderly conservative woman over the weekend. She marvelled at Tony Abbott being a Rhodes Scholar. I informed her that this was meaningless. Australians; observe more by what your politicians aren’t saying rather than what they do say. Your ignorance and laziness will sell us down the creek. And for The Conservatives to cry Xenophobia regarding the free trade deal with China just means we are now being governed by a neanderthal big business grovelling bullies. I’d say there would be more integrity in the Mafia than our current government.

11. kerriSeptember 7, 2015 at 11:14 am

    And there are some who have the temerity to suggest Robb would make a good treasurer???

12. WinstonSeptember 7, 2015 at 11:26 am

    You could give Robb the job of serving the pies and sausage rolls at a school Tuck Shop as long as he didn’t have to handle the money. Otherwise it would too much for him.

13. LeeSeptember 7, 2015 at 3:55 pm

    Now we know the reason for ag-gag laws.

14. JaggerSeptember 7, 2015 at 3:58 pm

    Kaye, one look at the dairy industry in New Zealand will tell you where we are going to end up.

15. Bronte ALLANSeptember 7, 2015 at 4:02 pm

    STOP .457 VISAS!! Stop ANY overseas workers form coming here & taking what few jobs we have available!

16. Adrianne HaddowSeptember 7, 2015 at 5:09 pm

    Now revealing itself…… the IPA agenda for Australia…… their member’s opportunity for investment.

    The ABC published an opinion piece on ChAFTA by Chris Berg ( IPA mouthpiece) last week where he argued that no one could deny the opportunity for the poor workers of China to move to Australia for the sake of the well being of their families.

    The hypocrisy is galling.

    Where the Chinese aren’t degrading our food producing areas with their open cut, ever-increasing in size mines, they are buying up the remaining farming land to avail themselves of our food production.

    The next big crisis in the world is looming- the food shortage, so Gina and her tax avoiding buddies are shoring themselves up to take advantage of that.

    A curse upon their houses and their political puppets.

17. Maureen Walton (@maureen_walton)September 7, 2015 at 5:33 pm

    Great article very informative Kaye.

    If Australian workers are a problem why are we changed so much for everything that we buy. Honestly people from America and England come here and are shocked at what we have to pay even for imported goods let alone food, Electricity, Gas etc….Look at the BIG problem with the Cables sent out here from China there is so mNY problems coming because of the seriousness of buying junk from China so dangerous..

18. LeeSeptember 7, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    “If Australian workers are a problem why are we changed so much for everything that we buy.”

    Good point. My partner and I pay the same price now, if not more, for Chinese-made crap that doesn’t last, that we used to pay when the items were Australian made. There’s a documentary on SBS that mentions China getting back at the US by flooding the market with their cheap manufactured crap and ruining manufacturing in the US. They’re taking over the world without a war, aided by our stupid, greedy politicians and stupid, lazy voters.

19. Royce ArrisoSeptember 7, 2015 at 6:02 pm

    Here’s the sullied ideological heart of the Chinese FTA. Read it and weep.

    Paragraph 3 of Article 10.4: Grant of Temporary Entry.

    ‘Australia shall not;

    a) Impose or maintain any limitation on the total number of visas to be granted to natural persons of the other party; or,

    b)Require labour market testing, economic needs testing or other procedures of similar effect as a condition for temporary entry’.

    There it is, the wet dream Liberals have been hoping to have ever since we gave WorkChoices the Big A. It’s payback time.

20. NasserSeptember 7, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    Watching Andrew Robb on Sunday, he couldn’t hold a conversation about the trade agreement. How on earth is he able to negotiate anything??? We will end up on the losing side of employment. End ALL 457 visas now. Train Australian workers if you don’t have enough skilled people for the job. Training can be paid for by the government and in the long run, it will cost less, a lot less than paying out benefits. I am sure we have more than enough people to do the work needed, over 800k unemployed and over 1.1 Million under employed. Why would we need any worker from overseas!

    As for large business getting in the farming business, I am all for it, nothing wrong with making money and getting richer. But I am not for it when its at the expense of employees. If the business is not going to make a profit cause employment cost is high and the only way to make a profit is to import workers, then they shouldn’t be in business.
    I believe if they use Aussie workers they will still make a good profit but to them, they will push to get an extra 0.1% profit more at the cost of anything. It’s simply called Greed.

21. NasserSeptember 7, 2015 at 7:12 pm

    Well, we all been crying for local made items. We just might get our wish, the only thing is, it will still be made by Chinese companies and Chinese workers, right here in Australia, LOCAL MADE.

    I actually believe, and have for a few years, China dominance in manufacturing will end. They will still be number 1 but many other developing countries will challenge for it, with different spots around the world becoming manufacturing hubs. Places such as Mexico, Latin America, African countries, Egypt and India, where a lot of cheap labour is available with very high employment.
    Many Chinese are becoming middle class and many workers are becoming aware of their low wages, this will push wages to be higher, even higher than normal wage cost of many other countries. That alone could be a big reason why other countries can and will challenge in the labour market.

22. Terry2September 7, 2015 at 7:16 pm

    Nasser

    You are probably right but as these manufacturing hubs are created in low wage countries they will be subsidiaries of their Chinese parent companies.

23. Anon E MouseSeptember 7, 2015 at 11:40 pm

    Gillard did increase and soften 457 visa rules – I recall how angry I was with her (and I think it was Martin Ferguson).
    This reinforced to me that she was from the right and prepared to do whatever it takes to hold power. There are too many in Labor and politics in general, who are prepared to sell out Australians.

    Barely a peep was heard out of the media and those unions from the right. Gina was glowing with the news though.

    The Chinese deal needs to be renegotiated or rejected. How dare they sign away our jobs.

    If Labor wants to be taken seriously, they need a leader who can stand up for Australia and Australians – and that is not Shorten and his right faction union power-brokers.

24. corvus boreusSeptember 8, 2015 at 6:47 am

    Royce Arriso is absolutely correct (thanks for the heads up). Checked and verified. Here’s a link to the full document.
    http://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/chafta/official-documents/Pages/official-documents.aspx
    Our countryfolk need to be made aware of how Article 10.4 of ChAFTA undermines both Australian workers and standards.
    The Australian people have just been betrayed and sold out by their government, big time.

25. Kaye LeeSeptember 8, 2015 at 7:48 am

    A hearing of the joint standing committee on the China-Australia FTA was held on Monday in Canberra and was addressed by Immigration and Border Protection officials.

    Department of Immigration and Border Protection first assistant secretary David Wilden said that if the free trade agreement came into effect, there would no longer be labour market testing for Chinese nurses, engineers, and other Skills Category 3 occupations.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/china-freetrade-deal-would-end-labour-market-testing-for-nurses-engineers-20150907-gjgv1q.html

26. Terry2September 8, 2015 at 8:02 am

    Gradually we are cutting through Abbott and Robb’s spin .

    Paragraph 3 of Article 10.4: Grant of Temporary Entry states that Australia shall not:

    a) Impose or maintain any limitations on the total number of visas to be granted to natural persons of the other party: or

    b) Require labour-market testing, economic needs testing or other procedures of similar effect as a condition for temporary entry.

27. stephentardrewSeptember 8, 2015 at 9:11 am

    Andrew rob is a self confessed liar and intellectual minnow blindly following the US reach for global hegemony regardless of the cost to ordinary Australians. In truth ordinary Australians warrant little attention other than a labor market to be regulated and held in check by greedy monopolists.

28. diannaartSeptember 8, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    The RC into the CFMEU, is more than ideological vengeance; it is merely another step towards disenfranchising Australian workers.

    This is a major move by global corporations – which includes the top power in China as much as it includes our own greedy capitalists, signed up politicians (from both sides) and their supporters such as the IPA, Heartland Institute and undoubtedly a whole lot more. They have been working towards this goal for years and we are still to wake up.

    Before someone accuses me of creating a world wide conspiracy – all the it is required is sufficient common interests among a diversity of people for whom their basic foundation is greed. They become ‘allies’ through perception of a common enemy – human freedom and liberty.

    Australia, an island nation can so easily be annexed from the rest of the world.

    I need to go and hide under the doona.

29. Anon E MouseSeptember 8, 2015 at 2:58 pm

    This is like watching a train-wreck in slow motion. Shorten trots out lame zingers/pingers, while trying to have two-bob each way – anything to feather his nest – but not making any headway.

    Labor right-factioned power brokers stick by their man, perhaps honouring their dirty deals done behind closed doors (Howse springs to mind – he was literally sleeping with the enemy who he recently married). Greens have become the Meg Lees of Australian politics, voting with the Lib-Nats against Rudd’s ETS, to give Hockey an unlimited debt limit that he is busy trying to reach, and more recently cuts to aged pensions.

    It wouldn’t take much for a new leader from the working-poor side of politics to ensure that the moneyed elite side of politics (the Libs, Nats, Lib-lite, and even some elitist Greens) are kicked to the curb.

    Problem is that Shorten is clinging on for dear life – prepared to do a Beazley – because Albo is an honourable man, and the Greens Ludlum is sidelined.

    Its too hot for the doona up here diannaart, I will just go bush.

30. diannaartSeptember 8, 2015 at 3:59 pm

    I do believe there are honourable people across all parties – however, right now, the far-right faction hold sway in the LNP & Labor.

    Not so much with the Greens – they are still on ‘L’ Plates and need to learn sometimes compromise is the only option – I recall they opposed the ETS due to concern that the scheme did not go far enough:

    The reality is that if the CPRS had been passed as it stood then we’d now have a carbon price of less than 50 cents that would be next to useless in driving the necessary structural reform of the Australian economy. That’s because the original CPRS allowed for unlimited use of UN carbon credits, or CERs, and applied minimal constraints on what type could be used. We’d have ended up in a fool’s paradise buying up lots of imaginary emission reductions from dodgy synthetic gas destruction credits and other credits from Chinese renewable energy projects that, it is now evident, the government would have driven the development of anyway.

    The legal architecture of the scheme would have been vastly better than what we’re currently looking at, but the result would have been not much different. Indeed it’s even conceivable that the introduction of the ETS then may have led to a more concerted assault on a range of other carbon reduction policies in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy as the business community used the existence of the scheme as a subterfuge for getting rid of everything else as unnecessary.

    Now, of course it is possible that once the ETS was in and legislated back in 2009 people would have got comfortable with it and government could have ironed out the weaknesses and strengthened it later.

    Also it’s conceivable Malcolm Turnbull may have avoided the divisive debates within his own party over the ETS and may have remained as leader. This could have ensured the ETS avoided the fate of a contentious political football.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/5/6/policy-politics/mess-all-christine-milnes-fault

    Would that we could engage a team made up of the best of the LNP (don’t laugh – they are there), Labor and the Greens and associated independents.

    One of the KPI’s would be no connection to big business or other powerful vested interests beyond that of the community of Australia.

    … back to my doona…

31. LeeSeptember 8, 2015 at 4:26 pm

    “One of the KPI’s would be no connection to big business or other powerful vested interests”

    That can be difficult to establish. How would anyone know that a certain minister is acting on a promise from big business for a well paid career after politics?

32. eli nesSeptember 8, 2015 at 5:49 pm

    this is years old, shorten is NOT wedged if he plays the man.
    A simple anti-robb campaign may re-ruin his health but without it Aust workers are stuffed.
    There is NO requirement for a chinese chippy, electrician, plumber, cabinet maker, welder and who knows what other tradesmen to show competence or prove certification before getting a FIFO job no need for looking for a Aussie..
    However my reading is that tariffs go by 2024.
    eg 9 years head start for gina and ningbo to buy the dairies/stations and charge us the earth for left overs from cattle kept in barns and milked 3 times a day.
    last sept ‘Sep 18, 2014 – Ningbo Dairy Group runs 20,000 cows on 30 farms in China. … astonished to read how openly Ningbo will exploit loopholes in our IR system to replace Australia’s “expensive” farm workers with Chinese employees at a fraction of the cost. … you import Chinese workers to run your Australian farm at a third of the cost.’
    put this on little billy’s facebook and you will get 0 likes and 0 comments. add requests for him to attack, his jesuit big brothers the rabbutt, hockey, pyne, joyce , bullock(louise pratt is ‘unsure is she is a lesbian after her partner’s sex change’/abbott is not too bad) and other low brow catholics like robb, turnbull, albo and cormann. and you get blocked.
    – no reply/discussion/argument – just blocked by a protected man surrounded by sycophants all safe in their world without strangers.
    Speak to a labor man or woman at the grass roots and ask what they would say to their workmates who had learnt the rabbutt’s slogans so well they still remember them???
    Speak to any coppers, servicemen/women or tradie and ask how the coalition are going?
    Then get on little billy, torpid tanya, witless wong, artless albo, joel judas, the clueless conroy, the mango etc all who should be rotating through the morning shows exposing the rabbutt and their cabinet minister.
    If they all took it in turns to press the minister the media will lap it up.
    Who noticed karl baby sucking up to the rabbutt but he almost savaged hockey.
    There is room for ‘nastiness’ get selective starting with robb, kevin andrews, ‘branch stacking’ pyne(he is able to be frightened about losing his seat, my friend is in sturt and at his last meeting he was NOT taking questions on education- his portfolio?????)
    get onto their facebooks and STIR the pot

33. diannaartSeptember 9, 2015 at 7:06 am

    @Lee

    There were/are/should be laws pertaining to employment after politics …. and enforced.

    Nothing is ever perfect, however, we can clean up a great deal from the sorry situation we have right now.

34. Kaye LeeSeptember 9, 2015 at 6:14 pm

    Speaking of skin in the game, Rupert has oil interests in the Golan Heights in an area Israel stole from Syria. This from 2013…

    “A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

    “This action is mostly political – it’s an attempt to deepen Israeli commitment to the occupied Golan Heights,” Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi told FT. “The timing is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is dealing with violence and chaos and is not free to deal with this problem.”

    Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area.

    The move would overtake the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone that was established in 1973 to end the Yom Kippur War and to provide a buffer zone between the two countries.

    Recent natural gas finds off Israel’s coast in the Mediterranean mean Israel’s offshore gas reserve is one of the largest of its kind in the world and will make the Jewish state a significant energy exporter in its region.”

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/israel-grants-golan-heights-oil-license-2013-2

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