Amid deep concerns that the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) would allow a flood of Chinese workers into Australia, effectively surrender Australia’s autonomy over its migration laws and drive down local wages and conditions, The Australian has reported today that opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has developed a compromise that will be announced next week, which most likely involves insisting that generic changes be made to Australia’s Migration Act to ensure the protection of local jobs while not forcing any changes to ChAFTA:
“We’ve got certain principles which we think are commonsense,’’ Mr Shorten said. Labor was in favour of a trade agreement with China but wanted to ensure “people that come here are appropriately skilled to Australian standards’’.
