Figures show cash incentives to get Australians into farm work are failing.
The horticulture industry is predicting a shortfall of 26,000 workers.
There are calls for a Pacific nations travel bubble.
The nation’s horticulture industry is projecting a shortfall of 26,000 fruit and vegetable pickers this harvest season due to the shutting of international borders that has kept many working holiday-makers locked out. According to figures from the Federal Department of Employment, a program that offers Australians who move to regional areas to take up harvest jobs has only attracted 148 workers in the month it has been operating.
The Relocation Assistance to Take Up a Job program offers workers up to $6,000 to cover things like transport, accommodation, and uniform — provided the employee works a minimum of six weeks.
“The numbers really aren’t surprising,” said Tyson Cattle from horticulture lobby group AusVeg.
The ABC understands that a similar initiative in Queensland, the Back to Work in Agriculture Incentive Scheme which offers workers who relocate up to $1,500 in rebates, has only had one successful applicant in the two months it has been operating with 30 people in the process of applying. Despite that, Queensland Agriculture Minister Mark Furner said the program — initially announced as a trial for two regions in the south-east of the state — will now be extended. “We are pleased with the early stages of the incentive scheme and we are now making it available to farms statewide,” Mr Furner said.
However, the lack of Australian workers, as well as international ones, has farmers like Queensland Granite Belt apple and strawberry grower Nathan Baronio worried. “Unfortunately we haven’t seen a significant amount of people taking advantage of the current schemes,” he said.
“In about 10 days’ time we are going to need an extra 60 to 70 workers and I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that at all.
“We already saw this in October, but when you don’t have enough staff you walk away from the crop. “We walked away from six and a half acres of strawberries. It resulted in crop loss of about $500,000 to $600,000.”
Bureaucratic nightmare for farmers
Lee Fox, a grain grower in Victoria’s Wimmera region, recently signed on a new worker through the Federal Government’s relocation assistance scheme and got the worker’s accommodation and relocation costs covered.
However, Ms Fox said it took her a month to organise the paperwork with the relevant Government departments and labour service providers — a problem for many farmers who often source many of their causal workers at the last minute, depending on when the crop is ready.
“I really am very doubtful that many farmers have access to this scheme because the paperwork and time involved in chasing how you access the program from both ends is exhausting,” she said.
“We are being hit at a time where we’re facing labour shortages. We don’t have the time to be spending weeks chasing things up.”
Despite the bureaucratic nightmare, the worker she employed, Wayne Russel, said the money has made his move from Melbourne to the Wimmera a lot easier. “The allowance will be covering some fuel receipts and work clothes, but the major expense will be accommodation, which for me will be about $4,500. I’m very grateful for it,” he said. Mr Russel was stood down from his job as a Qantas A380 pilot as the pandemic halted international travel and has embraced the new machinery he will now pilot — harvesters and boom sprays.
“This is allowing me to develop new skills and gain experience, and depending on how aviation pans out in the future I could potentially use this [farm experience] either seasonally or full time in the future,” he said.
Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said cash incentives for Australian workers were only one part of the solution to the rural labour hire problem, and said states should be focussed on allowing more Pacific islander workers into the country to help fill the gap.
“We haven’t relied on it [the relocation incentive scheme], we have made sure that we have had complementary measures to try and tackle this in any way we can with domestic supply as well as international supply [of workers],” he said.
“It’s now really the responsibility of the states to bring these people [Pacific workers] in if we can’t get Australians to undertake it.
“The pressure needs to be on to act and act quickly.”
Western Australian has had more success with it’s own incentive program, the Primary Industries Workers’ Regional Travel and Support Scheme, which allows workers who go bush for a job to claim a $40 a night accommodation rebate and a travel allowance of up to $500. The scheme has had 212 successful applicants since it launched two months ago, and 251 are still pending.
The ABC understands the South Australian Government is finalising a $5.5 million plan of its own to provide relocation assistance to workers.
Call for Pacific travel bubble
AusVeg is calling on the Federal Government to consider including Pacific island nations with no COVID-19 cases in the trans-Tasman travel bubble that already guarantees quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders coming to Australia. Tasmania will receive 700 seasonal workers this month from Pacific nations.
Analysis by consultancy firm Ernst and Young puts the worker shortage nationwide at 26,000 — a gap which AusVeg says could be better and more quickly filled by some of the 22,000 visa-ready workers from Pacific Island nations who are being held up by various quarantine restrictions. “We think that is a step in the right direction,” the firm said.
While Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa have recorded recent COVID-19 cases, countries like Nauru, Tonga, Kiribati, Micronesia, Palau, and Tuvalu have not. Currently, Pacific island workers are allowed into the country provided they quarantine as per the rules of the state they are arriving in. However, who pays for that — the worker, the farmer, the state government, or a combination — has been a source of contention which has delayed significant planeloads of workers.
