A STROKE of a pen on legislation and regulations would improve food producers’ capacity to house seasonal workers, says Member for Mildura Jade Benham.
Ms Benham will meet with Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny to push the “urgent” need to amend legislation controlling rural worker accommodation and other local planning amendments in a bid to help increase seasonal workforce and housing stock.
Ms Benham said a recent tour of farms struggling to attract seasonal workers because of a lack of viable accommodation options had highlighted the flaws in the current regulation.
“It’s a problem which could be immediately remedied by a stroke of the pen on legislation and regulations to better allow our food producers to house seasonal workers, and to ease the administration burden on local council planning departments,” she said.
“When Shadow Minister for Agriculture Emma Kealy and I recently visited farms in my electorate, they showed us how progress can be halted due to the many inconsistent guidelines they must meet.
“We were discussing the length of time a seasonal worker can stay in the on-farm accommodation, which is seven months.
“However, after discussing the issue with Steve Burdette, executive officer of Approved Employers of Australia, if it were nine months, it would curtail the labour shortfall a lot of food producers face at the end of the season.
“Not only that, it is the length of the visa for those on the Seasonal Worker Program so it makes much more sense that they can accommodate for that length of time.”
Ms Benham said it started with “simple changes” which “better aligned with current legislation and can only help strengthen our food producers and the workforce they need to put food on everyone’s tables”.
Ms Benham said other changes which must also be made included increasing the number of workers who could be accommodated, from 10 to a “much more realistic” number that better reflected the demands of individual properties and coming up with a better square metre format for the number of people housed in any one building.
“These are game-changing issues for the fruit and vegetable production industries – as well as the winegrowers – and they need to be addressed sooner rather than later,” she said.
Ms Benham said local councils had also sought amendments to local planning schemes, which would also be discussed at the meeting.
