Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion moved by the member for Riverina here today. He's someone I have a lot of time for in this place. One reason for that was spending a very valuable week with the member for Riverina on a delegation to Kenya late last year, an extremely rewarding experience, in a place where we did a bit of soil sampling, if I remember rightly. One of the other reasons, especially given that this is my first term in this place, is that it seems rarer and rarer these days to see members of the National Party speaking on policies that look at boosting our agricultural sector and that help our farmers—in this case, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, also known as the PALM scheme. The textbooks say this used to happen a lot more back in yesteryear. I'm glad we have a practitioner of the old ways amongst us here today! It is a really good thing to see as a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, and I really do mean that.

The P in the PALM scheme indicates that this is a program that doesn't just provide a huge boost to our agriculture sector. The PALM scheme provides a great deal of benefit to a number of our friends and neighbours in the Pacific region who come to Australia to work under the scheme, to their families and to their local economies. They number in the tens of thousands. In fact, as the member for Riverina's motion notes, the number is in the vicinity of 35,000. There are 35,000 workers under this scheme here in Australia. They are from countries like Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, which is a country I believe the member for Riverina knows quite intimately.

I don't necessarily want to the sour the mood of agreement here. Providing jobs, particularly in the agriculture sector, is a fantastic thing. In turn it provides a steady income for workers from Pacific nations to send back home. In fact, a worker in the PALM scheme repatriates on average around $15,000 every year. This scheme involves countries from a region where more than one-third of the people are living on less than $1,000 a year. This, quite accurately, can bring families out of poverty. Agriculture is not the only sector that PALM workers are filling vacancies in. They are in catering and the hospitality sector and all the way through to the care sector.

I can't help but notice that the member for Riverina puts the jump in participant numbers solely down to the efforts of the former government. In the dying days of the Morrison government the 25,000 quoted figure is close enough to be accurate, but that jumped by 44 per cent to 35,000 in seven months—six months earlier than the projected figures had indicated. It was somewhat naive to the fact that the PALM scheme was a big item on the Albanese Labor government's agenda during the Job and Skills Summit that was held not long after the election.

The program is a collaborative approach from the government. It brings contributions from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and all the way up to the Prime Minister himself.

The inclusion in that list of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations draws me to another key distinction between the scheme under the previous government and the scheme under the Albanese Labor government. We are focused on ensuring that workers are treated fairly and are not subject to horrendous conditions on their job sites. Ensuring a safe and respectful workplace should be just as important to us all as filling the workforce shortages this scheme provides for. Any breach of the conditions of workers is serious, and I am glad the government views breaches of workplace laws for workers under schemes such as this to be serious.

The story that gets painted of Australia by migrant workers can be clouded by the conduct of those who employ them. This can undermine the effectiveness of programs, such as the PALM scheme, and diminish our reputation abroad more generally. I'm sure this is something even those opposite, who have seldom been friends and allies of workers, would see as a terrible thing.

I suppose we can try to look past what motivates us, as long as we find ourselves at the same conclusion. Like those opposite, we see the inherent benefits of the PALM scheme. With this government at the helm I know this scheme can expand in a way that benefits us all.

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