Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

A newsflash from me this afternoon comes to you from the National Farmers Federation, God bless them. They found in a recent survey that the majority of farmers found that the Albanese government's policies were harming the agriculture sector. That's not very nice. At best, this is a poor reflection on a government who promised the world. They promised to leave no regional community behind. Remember the newsflash? At worst it's just another sign that Labor continues to forgo the needs of rural and regional Australia to win votes in the cities. This betrayal is not simply a domestic issue. Australia's agriculture sector is important on a global scale. In fact, we produce enough quality food—ethical food—for 80 million people. Imagine that for a moment. We need to be very clear, everyone: whether you live in the bush or the city, everyone is being impacted by Labor's bad agricultural policies as backed in by the National Farmers Federation. It might be targeted at farmers, but it insidiously weaves its way right down through the supply chain and finishes with the consumer. With a cost-of-living crisis in which families are struggling to pay their grocery bills, everyone will notice that every time they go to the supermarket.

Labor's anti-farming changes to the Pacific Australian Labour Mobility scheme commenced in January. Our farmers now must offer a minimum of 30 hours per week over four weeks to workers from nine Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste. Farmers will then be forced to offer an additional 30 hours per week every week from 1 July this year. That's what it says. It appears that everyone except Labor politicians knows that agriculture work is seasonal and weather dependent, as the member for Riverina pointed out. They're pretending to fix a problem that doesn't even exist, given that short-term workers already receive an average of 42 hours per week. It's predicted that this policy will decrease the agriculture workforce by 20 per cent. The PALM scheme has the potential to provide 42,000 workers, but Labor has made it almost unworkable for farmers to sign up.

As a farmer, I understand the basic principles of farming, and I understand that flexibility is the first pillar that underpins any farming operation. Mitigation of risk is another one. My father was a farmer as well, and so was his father before him. When we had a problem with the weather, the old saying was that we just 'farm around it'. They understand that. We farm around it. In order to do that, we need a workforce. Many of our Pacific Islanders end up in the great state of Tasmania picking our strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. They then move on to brassicas like cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. We all love a good Brussels sprout, don't we? After that, they come up to the really heavy country in the north-west where I farm and where we grow potatoes, peas, beans, broccoli, carrots and onions.

You will see that the workers move around to extend their duration so that they can maximise their visit to Australia and return to their country to look after their families. That's the entire premise behind their coming here. If we are going to inhibit that by restricting that movement, then we owe it to those good folk who do return. The other day I was talking to some Pacific Islanders who work for Costa's, Driscoll's and Harvest Moon. There was one fellow who had brought his family out 13 times. It was his 13th year of coming to Tasmania, and he loved it. We owe it to these island countries to make an investment in their coming back. We don't want to use them as slave labour; we want to invest in them. We need future farm managers. We need people doing courses and investing in IP—agriculture excellence—so that they can then take that back to their own home countries. We do the right thing.

Doing the right thing starts at government level. It starts at the legislative level. And I can't believe, I can't fathom, I can't get my head around how anyone could put our Pacific islander scheme at risk like this, given that what we are dealing with here is the fact that we need to feed a nation—and more. And it's getting worse. So wake up and start thinking about all that goes on in the real world in regional Australia.

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