From Tim Colebatch at The Age:
Rudd’s efforts to reach out to business have got nowhere. Some groups made impractical demands for Labor to withdraw its legislation to stop rorting of section 457 visas – which, as I reported earlier, has meant that in two years Australian-born workers have gained just 34,000 new full-time jobs. Brendan O’Connor as minister deserves credit for trying to restore the integrity of the system so that it operates as intended.
See also Colebatch’s earlier article, The books are being cooked on 457 visas –
Last month Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor announced new reforms to stop alleged rorting of section 457 visas. Prime Minister Julia Gillard then beefed up the issue by telling western Sydney the reforms would stop ”foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back”.
Since then Gillard’s opponents have claimed she is out to destroy the 457 visa program, which allows business to import temporary workers at will if they cannot find suitable workers in Australia. And at the other extreme, some tell us the whole 457 program is a rort allowing business to bring in foreign workers to undercut wages and save firms from the need to invest in training their own workers.
So far Gillard seems to be losing the debate; but then, she usually does. What do the figures show?
They show that while demand for section 457 visas had declined in most sectors with the slowing economy – visa applications from mining companies are down 15 per cent so far in 2012-13 – that is outweighed by surging demand in other industries that seems at odds with what we know about how they are faring.
For example:
Until mid-2011, few firms used 457 visas to import cooks; in 2010-11, just 45 visas a month were issued for skilled kitchen staff. Yet by January this year, 1690 cooks had been granted 457 visas, 240 a month. Cooks have suddenly become the biggest users of section 457 visas.
Why? It’s not because of any surge in demand. The Bureau of Statistics estimates that spending in hotels and restaurants fell 1.1 per cent last year, as Australians economised on discretionary spending to avoid more debt. Where is the labour shortage that requires us to suddenly import thousands of foreign cooks?
It’s not just cooks. This year alone, the number of chefs, their superiors, entering on 457 visas has shot up 150 per cent to almost 90 a month. Imports of cafe and restaurant managers have quintupled, from 27 a month to 134 a month. Does anyone smell a rat here?
Digging right down to the true root of the problem, I blame usury.
The central evil in our wonderful world of “capitalist” “competition”.
It means the “survival of the fittest”, you see — another pernicious doctrine.
The “fittest” are those most willing and able to borrow and then repay the banks their debt “money” … plus usury.
Barnaby Is Right 
Did anyone miss the rant from senator Michaela Cash a few days ago? This was the response to the amendments to the 457 visas:
1. local businesses needing to ADVERTISE locally.
2. the right of Fair Work Australia to INVESTIGATE where breaches were occurring.
So what why would any fair minded person have an issue with these benign changes unless they had vested interests?
The truth is that business failed to get Work Choices when the Howard regime was in. It also failed to get the current government to bow to its demands for lower wages and reduced conditions for Australian workers. So the way around the regulations was to rort the 457 visa system by importing cheap labour, all the time crying (lying) “no Australian workers available”.
And we all need to understand that the coalition has backed business in its quest to put Australians out of a job. As I have said on numerous occasions the coalition is but the servant of big business and business interests in general.
The 457 visa system needs to be tightened up so that a government board with stringent criteria approves or denies such applications. It is a rort which further damages our country and again demonstrates the absolute joke which politics in this nation has become. Until the NATIONAL INTEREST IS AGAIN put on the agenda Australians need to show a some intelligence and vote for neither party so that a clear message is sent. But don’t expect Australians to do what is in their interests and the interests of the nation any time soon.
Spot on Mick.
As a partner with my son on a Melbourne hotel in 1990s I smelt many a rat after the tempramental, overpaid Australian chefs went walkabout. The uncleaned mess left behind was incredible. They are only interested in the top of the kitchen appliances. 457 visa chefs and their associated staff willing to work for Australian award wages and not go for a months holiday on their first months pay would be essential to a catering business wishing to stay solvent
Maybe this is your experience but my assessment is that this is the normal type of blog you get from the self interest business business lobby. Not too dissimilar to the response from the business council to a pittance of a wage rise for hand to mouth workers (lowly paid)> I have seen it for 2 decades and the story line never changes. The well off business leaders whose salaries go up 10%+ pa year in and year out have the hide to threaten workers with the sack and bleat that they will go broke. Yeah right!!
If you were a competent businessman then you would have fired and hired until you got decent staff to run your business. That is how it works.
GOVERNMENT OF BY AND FOR THE CORPORATIONS
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Human flesh and blood must be purchased in the cheapest market and its products sold in the dearest.
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“The doctrines of this so-called school were very simple. The great and eternal verity of economics was announced in the golden words: “Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.”
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“Twighlight Over England” -‘The path to democracy is the road to oblivion’.
by William Joyce,
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A paragraph from page 26,
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“As there approached, during the last century, the final struggle to eliminate everything that did not reek of materialism, it was only natural that the Liberal Industrialists should found a college of Propaganda. This was the Manchester School of Economics. Tenth rate philosophical hacks were brought and assembled with instructions to invent the science of economics and justify the abominations which the craw-thumping Radical plutocrats were each day practising on the masses of the people.
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The doctrines of this so-called school were very simple. The great and eternal verity of economics was announced in the golden words: “Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.” This commandment being devoutly accepted, every other grace necessary to salvation would follow of its own accord. Hallelujah! How Jewish it all sounds. It followed, of course, that human flesh and blood must also be purchased in the cheapest market and its products sold in the dearest — for the benefit of the dear kindly old employer who erected outside his sweat-shops a tin tabernacle to which his workers must, under pain of dismissal, go every Sunday to thank God they were poor and hear sermons on the blessedness of their simple condition and “station in life.” Then of course, another grand precept was that of Free Trade. England had a start of almost 50 years ahead of the Continental countries in the matter of this Industrial Revolution.”
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Protocol No.8 “…..We shall surround our government with a whole world of economists. That is the reason why economic sciences form the principal subject of the teaching given to the Jews. Around us again will be a whole constellation of bankers, industrialists, capitalists and—–the main thing——–millionaires, because in substance everything will be settled by the question of figures.”
I’m still ambivalent on this whole 457 issue. Considering the number of people on 457 visas make up less than 1 per cent of the total workforce, any small nominal changes will result in large percentage increases. So a 150 per cent sounds like alot, but it may only mean a handful of more people are on a 457 visa.
The total number of 457 visas is also in decline.
Though it has risen in the area of hospitality (e.g. cooks), I am aware it can be difficult to fill these roles particular in regional areas. How many hoops do employers have to jump through satisfying the “Aussie workers for Aussie jobs” brigade before they can find someone who actually wants the job?
Grant Willaims provides some interesting commentary on the topic
http://immigrationptyltd.wordpress.com/tag/how-many-457-visa-holders/
I’m saying there is no rorting, going on but I believe Labor’s push for these laws is about appeasing the unions rather any cutting down on some massive problem
I have wondered where the push for equal participation for women in parliament originated – now I have a know.
http://www.allgov.com/officials/szubin-adam?officialid=28538
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Name: Szubin, Adam
Current Position: Director
Adam J. Szubin spent both his undergraduate and graduate years at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude from the college and cum laude from the law school. After his Fulbright scholarship, he returned to the states and clerked for Judge Ronal Gilman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Moving into the Justice department, he served as a trial attorney for the Terrorism litigation Task force in the civil division of the Justice department before he became Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and led the department’s efforts to combat terrorist financing. After his tenure at the Department of Justice, he worked as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and chaired the Money Laundering Threat Assessment Working Group. On August 1 2006, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson named Adam J. Szubin the Director of OFAC. In 2002, Szubin founded D.C. Minyan, an Orthodox Jewish congregation dedicated to equal participation for women.
Official Bio
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http://www.dcminyan.org/about/our-history/
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“…….There was consensus among the group that services should be fully egalitarian, meaning that women and men would lead all parts of the service and read Torah. On the issue of composing a minyan/quorum, there were different halakhic interpretations as to whether a minyan should consist of 10 men only or of 10 people (men and women)…..”
“The love of money is a root of all evil”
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/02/311805/top-vatican-bank-officials-resign/
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The director and deputy director of the Vatican Bank have resigned after a senior Italian priest with close ties to the bank was arrested on suspicion of fraud and corruption.
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In a statement issued on Monday, the Vatican announced that the bank’s director, Paolo Cipriani, and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, had stepped down.
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On Friday, Italian authorities arrested a senior cleric known as Nunzio Scarano after an investigation of the bank, also known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), produced evidence showing it may have been involved in an international fraud scheme.
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Scarano was arrested along with Giovanni Maria Zito, a former Italian intelligence agent, and Giovanni Carinzo, a financial broker.
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Prosecutors say Scarano paid Zito 400,000 euros ($523,000) to transport 20 million euros in cash from Switzerland to Italy onboard Zito’s private jet………..
“Men of God” are not messiahs Kevin. WHilst many put on a good show few are the real McCoy. This is why the Catholic Church is now being made to account for decades of blind eye abuse to countless number of children. What could these men have been thinking? And only last week there was a media report regarding a minsiter who found a piece of jewellery, handed it in, and when the statutory time for the owner to claim lapsed became the owner. When the real owner later found out and asked for it back this man of the cloth offered to sell it back for half its value. Only when the media showed up with their cameras did he return it and offer an apology (because he was caught red handed).
What this all says to me is that Christians are few and far between, that people have forsaken the faith because they have realised that they are dealing with charlatans for the most part, and that “the church” is all but irrelevant. It is a sour legacy for the love of God.
Mick,
I have come to the understanding that Roman Catholicism is Babylonian paganism dressed up in Christian terms thus the paedophiles.
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Re the return of goods found, I suppose these verses are apt –
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Leviticus 19:11
“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another”.
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Genesis 21:23
“Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son’s son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned”.
King James I perceive?
The long and the short of it is that those who we have entrusted with passing on the word of God and those we expect to govern in honesty and fairness have for the most part failed us badly. I applaud the media when it exposes these leaches but why does it take 2 decades to expose priests in wolves clothing and governments which are acting corruptly with the full knowledge of those who have power to stop it?
No Revelations please as lost on this audience. We live in sad times.
The medium is the message and Jews control the media.
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The government only has power within strict bounds – they are being held by the balls.
FULFILLMENT OF THE PROPHECIES 1923
12. “Thanks to Jew educationalists in the Press and on the platform, the churches are suffering from creeping paralysis. The Jews are preaching atheism to Christians, that Judaism may remain alone in the field. Mond with his English Review was doing the educational work of his tribe in polluting the minds of English readers.”
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I don’t wish to be drawn into religious arguments Kevin.
It appears on all probabilities that the rich pull the strings and the rest of us dance to the tune. We may not like it. We may not be able to stop it. But this is supposedly why we have a political system. The problem lies with the infiltration of the rich into politics with their bought politicians and influence. The party system then becomes a football match between the haves and the have nots.
The haves mostly win. Does not history show that the haves almost always get their way. From what I have seen in the past 30 years it appears (?) that the Labor side of politics takes on the nation building projects whilst the Liberal side of politics gives its benefactors truckloads of money. And of course we always hear the threats from employer groups when the poor get a couple crumbs in their pay packets. You know the stuff: “business creates jobs”, “jobs will be lost” and the rest. Welcome to human society. It makes you want to puke.
We’ve had Scotsman McTernan out here on a 457 visa helping Julia solve Australia’s political problems and failed, maybe K.Rudd should consider Netanyahu’s statement.
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http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/30/netanyahu-on-the-jew-herzl-and-tikkun-olam/
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“Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a fascinating speech yesterday at the memorial ceremony of Theodor Herzl in Jerusalem (27.6.2013). ‘The Jew’, stated Netanyahu, is the saviour and the liberator of humanity. He and she are the true meaning of progress as conveyed by the notion of ‘Tikkun Olam’ (fixing the world). ‘The Jew’, according to the Israeli PM, is the emblem of philosophical, ideological, spiritual, scientific and aesthetic innovation”.
Probably true, from their point of view, that’s why they have been universally hated for centuries, shows the rest of us up.
They only show us up by their unity of purpose. That unity though is only for themselves and their own benefit, regardless of what happens to the rest of us. The universal hatred you refer to didn’t just appear for no reason.
Sounds like the identical mode of operation of the rich in all nations operate. Maybe its a gene or an implant at birth(sic)??