Ag-visa can’t be empty promise

IT’S great that the federal government has announced a new farm work visa, that we’re told will be available to residents of 10 ASEAN nations.

As chair of Labor’s Indo-Pacific Trade Taskforce, it’s something I’ve been championing for a long time, and if it comes to fruition, I’ll be thrilled.

But I really hope this isn’t yet another empty announcement with no follow-up.

It’s been three long years since the Nationals first announced an agriculture visa, and it’s yet to become a reality – so Australian growers aren’t holding their breath, and neither will I.

Our farmers have been crying out for years for support to help harvest their crops, particularly recently due to the extra pressure from the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, this proposed agriculture visa will be trying to cover a massive worker shortfall after the federal

Coalition government agreed to ditch the farm work visa for British backpackers.

A newly-announced free trade agreement with the UK will end a requirement for British backpackers to work on Australian farms for 88 days if they want to extend their stay.

An Ernst and Young study last year found that nationally, backpackers make up 75 per cent of Australia’s farm workforce. That’s a huge number to lose.

So you’ve got to ask: will the new agvisa be able to cover that shortfall?

I’d like to see the visa extended to Timor-Leste workers, who have been a terrific help, especially to our Top End mango growers via the Seasonal Workers Program.

One of our nearest neighbours, Timor has been struggling with a Covid-19 flareup, and then the devastating Easter flooding.

Outside of the government, there are next to no employment opportunities.

We should be doing everything we can to help them get back on their feet, including offering seasonal work on our farms.

I recently hosted Labor’s Pandemic Recovery Taskforce, which met with farmers in Darwin to hear about the dire need for skilled workers. In the Northern Territory alone, there’s a current shortage of about 2000 farm workers, and it’s been extremely difficult to recruit Australian workers into these jobs.

The ASEAN deal would give our farmers access to a bigger pool of workers, but that may not solve the problems facing our next harvest season.

The annual mango harvest season is rapidly approaching, and it’s essential that we safely get in as many workers as we can, so we don’t go another year with fruit rotting on the ground.

Producers have already lost over $58m in lost crops due to a lack of workers in just the six months since December, and it’s believed those losses have so far been grossly underreported.

We don’t want to see a shortage of food, or rising prices, or the livelihoods of our farmers threatened.

I’ve been lobbying the Coalition government to bring Bladin Point Village online as a quarantine facility.

It will help us bring in overseas workers – and returning international students – without taking places from stranded Aussies coming home, who’ll continue to quarantine at Howard Springs.

The federal government was advised at the beginning of the pandemic (in an expert review it commissioned) that it needed to urgently set up a national quarantine network.

So far, Howard Springs is the only such facility in the country, with the government refusing a Toowoomba centre in Queensland, and only just now beginning talks with Victoria to build a facility there.

With the Coalition government’s struggling national vaccine rollout and quarantine failures set to keep borders closed for the foreseeable future, it’s hard to see how any new visa will fix labour shortages crippling Territory farms right now.

The federal government needs to get cracking – our farmers need this fixed immediately.