Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question goes to the Minister for International Development and the Pacific. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government is working to address agricultural sector workforce shortages and to support our regional neighbours by restarting Pacific labour mobility?

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Fairfax for this important question and note his experience in the agricultural sector with the work he has done in advocating for Australia's place in the Pacific.

Pacific labour mobility has made a vital contribution to Australia in recent years, with up to 12,000 workers a year working in the agricultural sector, making an important contribution. It's also one of the most important parts of our regional engagement. When I visit people in the region I find that the economic contribution we make through Pacific workers to villages and people working back in country is immense. While we fill these critical workforce shortages in our agricultural sector, we know those vital remittances really do make a great contribution to the GDP of so many countries in the region. That's why, from the beginning of this crisis, the government acted from the outset to ensure and preserve access so the Pacific Labour Scheme could continue.

On 4 April we announced those visa measures that enabled people who were here to remain for an extra 12 months and to redeploy to approved employers. And then on 4 August we announced the approved pilot measure, with the Northern Territory for the mango season, to make sure we could bring on people into industry and demonstrate it was safe to states and territories to do so.

On 21 August the government announced the support of the states and territories, through national cabinet recruitment under the Pacific Labour Scheme, that the Seasonal Worker Program would resume more broadly. Today I'm pleased to announce to the House the first cohort of 161 workers from Vanuatu, under the restart of the scheme, arrived in Darwin last week. Those people are in quarantine. And I'm further pleased to tell the House that all 10 partner countries—Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Timor-Leste—have agreed to restart their schemes. That means 15,000 eligible job-ready workers, who have experience in Australia and have been pre-vetted, are ready to come to Australia and supply our markets.

I also remind the House of the immense success of the Pacific countries in protecting themselves of COVID. Fourteen of the 17 countries in the world that are COVID free are in the Pacific region. We're going to continue working with the states and territories to bring as many people here that we can under these vital schemes to protect jobs and help with our economic recovery.

Just this week I want to commend the New South Wales government, who announced that they will bring 350 workers from Fiji under the Pacific Labour Scheme to fill labour shortages in the meat processing industry. We welcome that development from new South Wales.

As we know, there are more plans for more charter flights and more workers to come back to Australia. We know the vital importance of these schemes to our agriculture and primary production sectors and also to our neighbours, with the economic contribution to their GDP and to the villagers and people of the Pacific. This government will keep working with the states and territories to get every worker we can here to meet those critical workforce shortages, supply our labour needs and also do great economic recovery for the Pacific and our region.