THE Labor Party plans to “redirect” the agriculture visa, instead introducing a new pathway to address agricultural worker shortages using existing Pacific labour hire schemes.
The federal Opposition said if it won the federal election next month, it planned to develop the new “robust and sustainable” four-year visa stream under the Pacific Australian Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme.
Labor said it would meet upfront travel costs for Pacific workers under the Seasonal Worker Program and allow participants to bring their families to live and work in Australia.
Currently, workers arriving under the PALM scheme may be granted a visa for between one and four years, however, the scheme and the agriculture visa do not allow workers’ family members to arrive in the country.
The PALM scheme is the Coalition Government’s preferred solution for meeting agricultural workforce shortages, and more than 19,000 workers had arrived under the scheme by April 2022.
The scheme works with 10 countries including Tonga, Samoa, Fiji and Timor Leste, and has pre-screened 52,000 workers in January, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trading.
The Labor Party said it would also encourage Pacific families to permanently migrate through a new Pacific Engagement Visa, which it said was modelled on New Zealand’s Pacific Access Resident visa.
The agriculture visa was announced last June to bring skilled and semi-skilled workers by approved employers to meet shortfalls in sectors such as horticulture, meat processing, dairy, wool, grains and fisheries.
The Coalition said in March it had reached a memorandum of understanding with Vietnam, but delays in hearing tax legislation in parliament regarding the visa has meant no workers have yet arrived under the visa.
The visa, which was designed to supplement the PALM scheme, is currently capped to bring 1000 workers into the country.
The announcement has been welcomed by the Australian Workers’ Union, which said Labor’s policy would “reward good farmers” while making it harder for “dodgy operators”.
But Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said Labor’s announcement would “simply rename and rebadge” a scheme the current Federal Government had set in place.
He said the announcement would set back the confidence of Australian agriculture to plan, and could lead to higher prices at the supermarket.
“ABARES was already predicting a 20 per cent increase at the start of the year because of the shortage of labour,” Mr Littleproud said.
Member for Mallee Anne Webster said it would reduce the labour pool that farmers have access to, which she said would mean many farmers will have to reduce production.
“The end result of that will be that families will pay more at the check-out, as demand for our groceries will outstrip production,” she said.
“It will reduce the wealth to our nation, as exporters have less food and fibre to sell to the world.”
