Foreign workers 'enslaved'

Matthew Moore and Malcolm Knox

August 28, 2007
Isabela Marie Balading, daughter of deceased worker in Australia Pedro Balading, holds his picture at their house in Marikina City, Philippines.

Isabela Marie Balading, daughter of deceased worker in Australia Pedro Balading, holds his picture at their house in Marikina City, Philippines.
Photo: Cheryl Ravelo

CONDITIONS in remote Australian workplaces, where two foreigners died within three days in June, are so harsh that a leading immigration expert says they are "akin to slavery".

An investigation has exposed blatant breaches of the 457 skilled visa scheme and uncovered details of the deaths of the two workers in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and of a third man north of Perth.

The investigation highlights exploitation of overseas workers, too afraid to speak out, under a scheme that allows employers to sponsor thousands of foreigners to come into Australia and do jobs locals cannot or will not do ...

The Age has learned that a university-trained Filipino farm supervisor, Pedro Balading, was thrown off the back of a Toyota utility and killed on an NT cattle station in June. A witness, who was on the back of the ute, says it was being driven fast on a rough road.

Mr Balading, 35, left behind a wife and three young children.

His wife says that in the months before his death, he complained repeatedly that his working conditions were much tougher than he had been told to expect, and that he was forced to do menial work such as fencing, in breach of his skilled visa.

Two days earlier, a logger from Inner Mongolia, China, 33-year-old Guo Jian Dong, died in a remote state forest 700 kilometres west of Brisbane. A tree he was felling brushed a dead tree, which then fell and crushed him ...

In the other case that has come to light, a Filipino stonemason, Wilfredo Navales, 43, was crushed to death by two slabs of granite in a stoneworks north of Perth in March. Mr Navales's family says he died doing labouring he was forced into, rather than using the skills for which he was ostensibly brought to Australia ...