The Senate inquiry, set up to investigate rampant wage fraud among foreign visa holders, also recommended a review of the working holiday maker visa program, with the potential to cap the number of visas issued.

It found franchising giant 7-Eleven had systemic wage fraud issues, including evidence that its franchisees were deliberately falsifying payroll records and timesheets, underpaying workers and encouraging staff to breach their visa conditions.

It said it was not good enough for 7-Eleven co-founder Russ Withers "to assert that the 7-Eleven franchise network has been a successful business since its inception when it seems clear to most objective observers that the majority of franchisees could not make a go of their business unless they broke the law and underpaid their workers".

It recommended that Treasury and the ACCC review the Franchising Code of Conduct and investigate whether franchisors should take some responsibility if their franchisees are exploiting workers.

"With respect to the balance of power and responsibility in a franchise relationship, the Franchising Code is designed to protect the franchisee from a franchisor abusing its more powerful position in the relationship. However, a conflict exists between competition law (including the Franchising Code) and workplace law," the report said.

It also recommended investigating whether a franchisor should be given the power to terminate a franchise agreement without notice if there were reasonable grounds for believing a serious breach of the Fair Work Act had taken place.

It said that by 29 October 2015, no 7-Eleven franchise agreement had been terminated as a result of a franchisee failing to rectify a breach notice.

"There had been only one termination (of a store in Perth) related to a payroll issue and that involved fraudulent conduct (an available ground under the Franchising Code) associated with the manner in which underpayment of staff had been effected."

The Senate committee's 373-page report, recommended that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection review its procedures, particularly in the more egregious cases of worker exploitation including people trafficking and slavery-like conditions to ensure a "victim-centred" approach.

The Senate committee said in a report that "a substantial body of evidence to this inquiry demonstrated blatant and pervasive abuse of the working holiday maker (WHM) visa program by a network of labour hire companies supplying 417 visa workers to businesses in the horticulture sector and the meat processing industry." In some cases, workers were treated like slaves.

The report, titled A National Disgrace, recommended the introduction of a public register for labour hire contractors.

Labor and crossbench senators recommended labour hire contractors be issued a licence if they could meet certain standards including compliance with all workplace, employment, tax and superannuation laws.

Controversially, it said there should be a requirement that a business can only use a licensed labour hire contractor to procure labour.

But Coalition committee members disagreed with the recommendation to license labour hire firms, saying "it would punish those labour hire firms which are already complying with relevant laws".