Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I recently had the pleasure of visiting PNG on a multipartisan delegation focused on health with the member for Riverina, and we had a great time. It was very educational. We were able to do our job thanks to a small army of personnel from Save the Children, DFAT and other organisations who got us safely from A to B. Our security detail was provided by a private contractor run by one of my constituents, David Saul. David is ex-military and, through his company, employs local people in a variety of occupations, here in Australia as well as in PNG. These tasks include private security, facilities management and training. I met David at the end of last year to discuss improvements to the PALM scheme. He shared his frustrations with red tape and prioritisation of rural above metropolitan areas, as well as how labour shortages were constraining his business growth. This was my first trip to PNG, and I must confess that I found the level of poverty confronting. As someone who spent the first decade of their life in Zambia, I did not expect this degree of deprivation. People are poor, infrastructure is crumbling or non-existent, connectivity is patchy, half the children are growth retarded and gender based violence is rife. Life is hard, and it seems to be getting harder under the demands of a growing population that may be somewhere between 15 million and 20 million.

Despite their hardships, the kindness and generosity of the people of PNG shone through. As a parliamentarian, however, I don't get to romanticise reality. Our Pacific family needs us, and we want to be their preferred partner of choice when it comes to economic development. The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, or PALM scheme, speaks to mutual benefit. With key-worker shortages gripping essential services like aged-care, and with our businesses desperate for workers, the Albanese government wants to open the door to our Pacific family—thereby boosting remittance flows and connections with our region.

Seasonal workers send, on average, $1,000 per month to their families, and longer-term workers remit $1,300 per month, transforming lives back home and boosting the GDP of their countries as well. It's a big deal in a region where more than one third of people live on less than $1,000 a year, noting that long-term PALM workers send home, on average, 15 times the average. Since coming to government, the PALM program has swelled by 44 per cent, going from 24,000 at the end of May, when we took government, to over 35,000 workers at the end of December. We have delivered a full six months ahead of schedule.

The Albanese government, from day one, started to repair relationships in the Pacific that had been neglected by those opposite, and it is paying a mutually beneficial economic dividend. Open to nine Pacific islands, including Fiji, Kiribati, PNG, Nauru, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Timor-Leste, this temporary program is demand driven and uncapped, in order to fill gaps unmet by domestic labour supply. So far, over 400 approved businesses have taken up the scheme, but we would like more Australian businesses to join. Eligible businesses, at this stage, include any sector in rural or regional areas or in agriculture nationally. Temporary programs may be short term, up to nine months, or longer term, ranging from one to four years.

Until now, workers have been being unable to bring their dependants to Australia. However, in 2023, 200 families of long-term workers will be allowed to stay. These lucky families will enjoy the benefits of the childcare subsidy, family assistance payments and access to health and education. Criticisms of the scheme include that it is too slow, with employers unable to recruit directly in-country, except through a third party, and employers in city based businesses are denied access to labour. The scheme has been marred by weak safeguards, which have invited exploitation of workers by unscrupulous operators. Implementing the recommendations of the Migrant Workers Taskforce will improve workplace conditions, bringing them in line with community expectations. This is being achieved within language predeparture briefings of workers, as well as employers meeting obligations around accommodation, worker wellbeing, sufficient hours of work and so on.

The PALM scheme will continue to grow as long as there is demand from businesses in Australia. Given widespread labour shortages across multiple sectors, I hope to see an expansion of the scheme to metropolitan areas. With more than 37,000 workers currently on a waitlist and yawning vacancies in aged care, we must expedite this process. The mutual benefits are clear. Our introduction of key aged-care reforms means that we are going to need a whole lot more aged-care workers, and currently we seem to be falling short by around 20,000.

Under us, the PALM scheme has been strengthened by our intensified diplomatic push and our commitment to worker security and to the shared aspirations of the Australian business community. We hope to see it grow in tandem with business and our own economic interests.

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