THIS week I had the pleasure of hosting shadow trade and tourism minister Kevin Hogan in Mallee.
Kevin and I travelled to see Sunraysia and Swan Hill region producers and businesses.
We also discussed trade with horticulture industry stakeholders, and tourism with Mildura Rural City Council and Mildura Regional Development.
The region’s horticultural businesses and industry stakeholders tell us their top issue remains an inadequate and financially unviable labour force.
The federal Labor government’s industrial relations shake-up is squeezing family farm businesses and jeopardising workforce reliability by paying no regard go the reality of seasonal harvests.
Labor’s union-led changes will impose a right for migrant workers to 30 hours every week which pays no regard to weather, whether the crops are ready or other weekly harvest challenges.
Worse still, in addition to the 30-hour-a-week regulars, when harvest begins, farmers will need to find more people to get the fruit off the trees or the vines while harvest conditions are ideal.
The government is yet again reducing Australia’s competitiveness in export markets and increasing the cost at the checkout for families already squeezed with cost-of-living pressures.
From July 1 Labor is also increasing the cost of a “backpacker” or working holiday maker visa by $130, to $640, and potentially limiting what has been a visa of up to three years, to just one year.
This makes our backpacker visa arrangements the most expensive in the world, higher than New Zealand, the US, Canada, the UK or Germany.
Backpackers have been a feature of horticultural harvests for decades and all this while we are tens of thousands of workers short every harvest in Australian horticulture.
I challenge any Labor minister to visit the hard-working family operations in Sunraysia – as Mr Hogan did with me this week – and talk to them about the real impacts their policies are
having on their business viability.
