The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has admitted he will need to overhaul the English-language test in the government’s citizenship package to have any hope of getting the legislation through the parliament.


But the critical parliamentary powerbroker on the controversial citizenship overhaul, the Nick Xenophon Team, is signalling the rework will need to be more broad-ranging than just the language test.


“There are so many components of this whole package that are a problem,” the NXT senator Stirling Griff told Guardian Australia on Tuesday. “Our position hasn’t changed at all.


“Peter Dutton needs to go back to the drawing board.”


Last week, the Senate gave Dutton four sitting days to put his controversial citizenship bill up for debate, otherwise it would be struck from the notice paper.


The procedural pincer movement in the parliament came less than a week after the Nick Xenophon Team derailed Dutton’s attempt to enact the citizenship package, saying it could not support it in its current form.


The government does not currently have the numbers to get its citizenship overhaul – which has been badged politically as a national security measure – through the parliament.


It has been unclear how the government would respond to the current parliamentary deadlock – whether it would pull the whole package, or negotiate – but Dutton on Tuesday signalled for the first time he was prepared to negotiate.


Asked whether he was prepared to overhaul the English-language test, which currently requires a university standard of language fluency, Dutton told Sky News: “Of course we are flexible.”


The minister said he was talking with Nick Xenophon in an effort to reach a compromise. Dutton described the dialogue with the NXT as “constructive”.


The government needs the NXT bloc because both Labor and the Greens are opposed to the package.

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Lazy backpackers are again being blamed for abandoning big numbers of old cars at Perth Airport, with more than 100 vehicles dumped over the past year.


The airport has warned it would move to seize dozens of cars unless owners came forward within a few days to reclaim their vehicle.


Some have suggested the cars could have been left behind by workers heading back east with the end of the mining boom, but Perth Airport says most were probably left by backpackers who could not be bothered to sell their car before flying overseas.


Perth Airport spokeswoman Debra Blaskett said most of the cars were in poor condition, were unregistered or unroadworthy.

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLIKC THE LINK BELOW:
thewest.com.au/news/wa/backpackers-blamed-for-abandoned-perth-airport-cars-ng-b88599461z

Some of Australia's top restaurateurs are warning their businesses are being put at risk due to an extreme skills shortage in hospitality that is being exacerbated by the Federal Government's drastic changes to the 457 visa program.


The changes, announced in April, will abolish the pathway to permanent residency for key roles including restaurant managers, bakers and cooks.


The hospitality industry relies on foreign workers to fill certain roles, from a French pastry chef to a specialist in sake.
But business owners have told Lateline the changes mean a level of uncertainty that will jeopardise their plans for expansion — and ultimately impinge on the quality and diversity of the Australian dining scene.


Celebrity chef Neil Perry has about 3,000 staff across dozens of restaurants, including Rockpool, Jade Temple and Rosetta in Sydney, about a third of whom are on some kind of temporary work or student visa.


"[Workers on 457 visas] are super important for the restaurant industry because there are skills we need to bring in, both back- and front-of-house, in cooking, service [and] sommeliers," he said.


He said he had always sought to employ Australian staff in those positions, but it was not always possible to find the right skillset.


"It means we have to reflect on [any possible] expansion — can we or can't we. [With the] labour market saying [it] can't supply any more, we have to rethink what we're planning to do."
Hospitality already facing skills shortagePrime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in announcing the abolition of the 457 visa category, said the change was designed to ensure Australian jobs were filled by Australian workers where possible, and that foreign workers were not being brought in "simply because an employer finds it easier to recruit a foreign worker than bother hiring an Australian".

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​mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-13/upmarket-restaurateurs-scrapping-457-will-hurt-food-industry/8893970?pfmredir=sm

AN American musician booked for an Australian tour has been kicked out of country after arriving in Melbourne on a tourist visa.


Immigration officials questioned Los Angeles-based indie performer Colleen Greenover her visa and her plans while in Australia before she was detained overnight and then deported earlier this week.


“They (officers at the airport) took me to an interrogation room where I waited, was interrogated on tape, waited more, was interrogated more, waited more, and finally was told that my visa was being canceled (sic),” she wrote in a Facebook post from LA on Friday.
​

She was due to begin a four-date tour of Australia with fellow American band Harlem and local outfit Bleeding Knees Club.

Ms Green said her promoter, Bone Soup, told her they had secured a visa “and to just say I’m visiting friends and everything would be fine”.


“I really had no reason to doubt this as I have traveled (sic) all over the world to perform and have done so many times under the pretense (sic) of ‘tourism’ with no incident,” Ms Green said.

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Fergus Hunter I Eryk Bagshaw

A little-known visa category has become a "new frontier for unscrupulous employers" looking to exploit cheap foreign labour at the expense of Australian workers. 


The 400 visa, designed to parachute international specialists into short-term roles, has emerged as a "sleeper" category with looser restrictions than the 457 foreign worker visa, which was recently abolished by the Turnbull government in a high-profile "Australians first" crackdown.

In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of workers have been employed on short stay visa categories, including the 400's predecessor the 456, with at least 11 cases before the Fair Work Ombudsman. But experts warn despite the examples of exploitation, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has little detail on the employment of these workers.
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Among them, Chinese labourers flown in to dismantle the former Mitsubishi car plant in the Adelaide Hills paid $1.90 an hour, Filipino metal fabricators paid $4.90 an hour to install animal feed mills in NSW, and nine Indonesian timber workers flown into Tasmania and promised bonuses when they returned home.

​Mark Jones at the Fremantle harbor in Western Australia. Photo: Tony McDonough

FOR FULL STORY PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
​www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-new-frontier-the-littleknown-alternative-to-the-457-foreign-worker-visa-20170901-gy8p0j.html