Inspectors uncover over $300k in unpaid wages owed to migrant hospitality workers
Inspectors have uncovered more than $300,000 in unpaid wages owed to migrant workers and stripped dozens of venues of their sponsorship rights, after a sweeping federal audit of the regional hospitality sector.
Operation Odin, led by the Australian Border Force, targeted more than 300 regional cafes, pubs and restaurants over seven months, conducting unannounced inspections across every state and territory. The results were damning: more than half of all venues visited were found to be underpaying or exploiting sponsored migrant workers, with breaches including illegal wage deductions and excessive rostered hours.
Among the cases uncovered, a regional Victorian restaurant was ordered to back-pay more than $50,000 after failing to apply penalty rates to a sponsored worker over two years. A New South Wales venue was required to repay more than $31,000 in wages and superannuation, and was banned from taking on new sponsored workers for six months. In total, 41 businesses lost or had their sponsorship rights restricted, while a further 35 received compliance notices.
Investigations into at least 80 additional businesses remain ongoing.
Migrant Workers Centre chief executive Matt Kunkel said the scale of exploitation was unsurprising given the structural vulnerabilities facing overseas workers in regional areas.
“We do see migrant workers continuing to be exploited in the hospitality industry … it’s an industry where lots of migrant workers work,” Kunkel told The Age.
“You have a lot of backpackers rolling through the regions who are probably on flat rates or cash jobs, and for them, it might not be a huge deal because they are not sticking around. But where you’ve got people coming maybe with the view to a more permanent settlement, that’s where the exploitation becomes really pervasive because it can affect their ability to stay.”
Kunkel also highlighted the two distinct groups at risk: those unaware of their entitlements, and those whose visa status gives employers dangerous leverage.
“There is a great number of people who don’t yet understand the rights and conditions they should be receiving, so they are susceptible to dodgy bosses who know they are doing the wrong thing,” he said. “Then you have another cohort of workers who are more tightly bound to their employer, so in those circumstances workers may be getting threats from their employer that they may withdraw their sponsorship, or they will have them deported.”
The Albanese government introduced strengthened laws in 2024, criminalising the use of visa status as a tool of exploitation and offering greater protections to workers who come forward. Kunkel welcomed the reforms but stressed they must be paired with education campaigns to be truly effective.
“It is great to see the regulators out clamping down, but what is needed is wider programs to educate migrant workers that they have these rights and new protections. You can’t enforce a right you don’t know you have.”
Assistant Minister for Citizenship Julian Hill warned further enforcement action was coming, framing the issue as one that harms the broader industry.
“Dodgy employers use underpayment and mistreatment to gain an unfair edge over businesses doing the right thing and wages and exploitation drives down wages and conditions for all Aussie workers. When migrant workers are exploited, all Australian workers and businesses lose out,” he told The Age.
ABF Commander John Taylor described the operation as one of the largest coordinated efforts to tackle migrant worker exploitation in the sector. Businesses that have sponsored workers face monitoring for up to five years, with further unannounced inspections expected.
Jonathan Jackson, 30th March 2026
