Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Nicholls for this very important motion when it comes to agriculture and farming and, ultimately, cost of living as well. I want to commend the member for Hunter. He got there in the end. The member for Bendigo and the member for Blair didn't. I was mistaken. I thought that we were potentially still in government because the member for Hunter spent a little bit of time and the members for Blair and Bendigo spent 100 per cent of the time talking about our former government! They had five minutes to outline the Albanese government's plan for agriculture and PALM workers and they couldn't. I think that says it all about this government. They spend more time about talking about the opposition than they do governing. The sad reality of that is that farmers and communities and then consumers feel the effects of that.

In my community of Casey we are lucky to have a strong agricultural community. Agriculture is a big part of who we are as a community because of the contribution it makes to our economy but also our culture. I am proud to be part of a farming family. My family came from Italy in 1952 and established a farm in Silvan. Seventy years later, my uncle has finally retired from strawberry farming. It played a huge part in our lives. There is no doubt that he and every farmer knows that getting access to workers is the big challenge.

As the member for Nicholls said, we are short 172,000 workers for food in this country. The government's solution, as the member for Hunter said, is 38,000 workers on the PALM scheme, leaving us about 140,000 workers short for agriculture. But it's really important we understand what this shortage means. What happens every season for every farmer in the electorate of Casey and every farmer across the country is they make a decision. The decision they make is on the questions: How much crop am I going to plant? How many head of cattle am I going to buy? They make that decision based on many factors. One of those factors, particularly over the COVID years and I know for a fact in 2024 and beyond, is: do I have access to workers to pick my product? The simple reality is that, if they are not confident they'll have access to workers, what do those farmers in those communities do? They do the only prudent thing; they plant less crop. If you plant crops in May and it gets to September, October and November, if we're talking about strawberries as an example, and you do not have workers to pick them, they die. They rot and go to waste, and all that time, money and effort disappears. That's before we allow for weather events and other things they obviously cannot control. So they are controlling the controllables. You don't have to be a genius to understand that, if farmers make the decision to plant less crop, there is going to be less product during that season. Supply and demand tells you that, if there is less supply and there is the same level of demand, prices will go up. Then, when people walk into a supermarket, they'll be paying more for their fresh fruit and vegetables.

There is a 140,000-worker gap that this government doesn't have a solution to. If anything, they are making it even harder. They are making it impossible for farmers under the PALM scheme. On 1 July 2024, they want to make it compulsory to offer 30 hours per week, every week, to PALM scheme workers. The reality is that anyone who's spent a day in farming knows that it's so variable and flexible depending on the weather conditions that one week there might be 70 hours and the next week there might be 20 hours depending on how much it's raining, how hot it is and so many other variables. If you set a baseline of an employee working for 15 hours and you've got to pay them for 30, and then, the next week, they work 40 hours and you have to pay them for 40, it is going to drive the cost up for the consumer or it's going to send farmers to the wall.

This is just one of many examples of this government not understanding how it works in business, how it works in agriculture or how it works in industry. Ultimately, it is the consumer that is paying more in the supermarket because of this government's incompetence.

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