Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Coalition's strong track record of delivering for Pacific Island economies through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme, which has been instrumental in setting up Pacific workers and farmers for success;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) there are currently 35,000 PALM workers in Australia; and

(b) during the COVID-19 pandemic, the former Government managed to double the PALM Scheme from 12,500 to 25,000 participants, which furthered Pacific economies and ensured Australian food security; and

(3) recognises that this recent additional growth is due to the previous Government's streamlining of the Pacific Labour Scheme, which ensured a more efficient and safer PALM Scheme, in turn benefitting both workers and farmers.

In moving this motion, I want to emphasise the fact that this is a coalition policy. PALM was introduced in April 2022. It replaced the Seasonal Worker Program, from the Gillard Labor years, in 2012, and the Pacific Labour Scheme, introduced in Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership, in 2018. When PALM came in, Zed Seselja was the Minister for International Development and the Pacific. It's a pity that the former Australian Capital Territory senator is now no longer in the upper house, but he is certainly contributing to better outcomes in the Pacific in a private capacity.

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme allows for Australian businesses to hire workers from nine Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste. The PALM scheme helps to fill labour gaps in rural and regional Australia by offering employers access to a pool of workers. I have to say that it's not just in fruit picking, agriculture and meat processing that Pacific island workers come to the fore. It's in aged care, as you would know, Deputy Speaker Chesters, and in hospitality. Being a regional member, you would know that there are many gaps. Indeed, the Regional Australia Institute identifies 80,000 full-time vacancies in regional Australia right now. I see the member for Solomon nodding. He'd know, representing Darwin, just how many jobs there are right across our great nation.

The money sent from Pacific workers in Australia home to their families makes up a significant amount of gross domestic product for their home countries. It helps to contribute to raising standards of living and better health and education outcomes, particularly for children. It helps families to achieve their hopes and aspirations for themselves and their young ones and even to buy a home. As I say, a significant proportion of GDP comes from Australian workers, PALM workers, sending their money back to their Pacific home nations. Once approved to recruit under the PALM scheme, employers can access two cohorts of workers: seasonal workers for up to nine months and longer term workers for between one and four years.

We welcome the 35,000 PALM workers now in Australia. On 27 October last year, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, the member for Shortland, said he wanted to see 35,000 PALM workers in Australia over the next 12 months. On 31 October there were 31,500 PALM workers already in Australia. The government appear to have deliberately set themselves an easy goal by giving themselves 12 months to recruit just 3,500 people. When you set the bar low, it's pretty easy to achieve. It's pretty easy to jump over the bar and pat yourself on the back and say: 'Well done. Look at me—aren't I good? Fantastic.' But on 25 March 2021 there were 22,500 PALM workers in Australia. In seven months, 9,000 workers came to Australia. What made the government think that it would take 12 months to get what they were trying to achieve—what Labor set their target at?

Labor are not only setting themselves lowball goals; they're also taking credit for our work. But that's not surprising. We're used to this situation. It was the coalition who streamlined the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Program to ensure a more efficient and, I'll have to say, safer PALM scheme. One of the reasons for this recent growth is the fact that it benefits both workers and farmers—farmers particularly. We know that Pacific Islanders are so beneficial in so many areas of endeavour, but it's in agriculture where they really shine. In November 2021 we announced the start of a new simplified and modernised approach—our Pacific Labour Mobility Scheme—to the SWP and the PLS. The new PALM scheme we introduced has additional flexibilities, expanded access to the programs, additional support to boost worker arrivals and bolstered worker welfare measures. This is so important because we want to give those Pacific Islanders the surety that they're going to be safe, their conditions are going to be flexible and they're going to be paid the right amount.

I've been to Vanuatu—a couple of times in recent months—to Papua New Guinea and to the Federated States of Micronesia, and one of the things we also want to make sure is that the right balance is met, because what we don't want to do is take the best and brightest away from those nations and leave them short—leave them in a situation where they don't have skilled or unskilled workers in their own countries doing work for them. I commend the PALM scheme. It is a very good scheme, and it was the coalition government that introduced it.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for the motion?

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll second it and reserve my right to speak.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm also very pleased to back my friend and colleague the member for Riverina on this very important motion about the PALM scheme. I pay tribute to the member for Riverina, who has taken the task of engagement with the Pacific nations very seriously and has engaged in quite a lot of their cultural activities as well. I'm very pleased that I can support him on this motion.

I'm personally aware of a couple of places in my electorate where the PALM scheme is operating. They are largely citrus orchards. It suits that industry. The work is not all year round. The citrus harvest goes for about six months. The workers come across, do their six months and then go home. What's important, like with everything else, is the personal relationships that build up between the workers who come across and the employers.

I spoke to some ladies from Vanuatu, who were on an orchard in Moree. In one season, they'd saved enough money to buy their own land. In the second year, they were saving enough money to build a house on it. They'd actually left their husbands at home with their children, and they were doing a sterling job in Moree. I have also spoken to some Fijians working in a similar situation in Gunnedah.

The reason this scheme works so well is that it's not full-time work; it's seasonal work. I know there's an amendment coming through on the Pacific Engagement scheme that may be going to be discussed this week in parliament. I've got a few concerns about that one, because it's a ballot, and going into a ballot sort of removes or puts at a distance that personal relationship that people have. It's also permanent migration on a regular basis. The problem with that is that then we could be removing some of the more motivated future leaders of our neighbours, permanently, to Australia, whereas the PALM scheme really acts as an economic stimulus for the villages of these islands where they come from. The ladies that I met in Moree work really hard. They work six days a week. On Sunday, they go to church and look after their domestic affairs, and then they're back to work on Monday. They are thoroughly decent and nice people who are taking the opportunity to lift their families out of poverty. I heard anecdotally this week that a large proportion of the GDP of some of our Pacific neighbours is made up of income that comes from guest workers who come to Australia and send their money home.

So I back the member for Riverina. I think we need to continue this scheme. It's probably limited in its numbers, because the countries where they come from don't have huge populations. But, as I say, I do have some reservations about the new engagement. Don't get me wrong. In my electorate, we are short thousands of workers. But we actually need to be specific about the skill set and the aptitude of the people who come in, and just having people on a ballot I think is a little bit random.

Thankfully, as I know from the employers that I speak to, employers treat these people very well. I've been to the accommodation. It's been fully renovated, with leather lounges and industrial kitchens. It's very comfortable.

The member for Spence mentioned exploitation of workers, and I think that is something we need to watch for. That would be about the lowest form of activity—to bring people in from overseas and then treat them poorly in an employment situation.

So this is a great scheme, instigated by the coalition government, and, in opposition, supported well by my colleague and friend the member for Riverina.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Riverina as well for giving us this opportunity to talk about the PALM scheme. We acknowledge the background to this scheme, but we're also incredibly happy and confident in our ability to grow it, because our government understands the importance of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, or the PALM scheme, to not only our Pacific family but also those Australian producers that benefit so much from it.

I was quite happy to listen to the history lesson on the program. But it was a serious thing when, as honourable members might remember, the current Leader of the Opposition made jokes about the future of people in the Pacific, some time ago. That is not the sort of empathy that we want, or need, to grow and further enhance our relationship with the Pacific islands. I hope that has been a learning point for some of those opposite. I don't put the member for Riverina in that basket at all, but I think it goes to underscore a point about how important not only diplomacy is but also real action on climate change and on the things that are important to people, such as employment in the Pacific, is.

When our government came to office, the total number of PALM workers in Australia was just over 24,400. The member for Riverina had some figures. In the October 2022 budget we committed to reaching 35,000 workers by June 2023. We reached that goal in December, some six months ahead of schedule. Far from being a small increase, or a low bar, this was a 44 per cent increase in just seven months, more than quadrupling the workers here in Australia from the Pacific compared to pre-COVID times. Reaching this milestone early is one demonstration of our commitment to immediately address longstanding workforce issues across the key sectors in our economy. Coming from the Northern Territory, I certainly understand that.

The workers coming under this scheme are earning income, developing skills and filling workforce shortages across 28 industries, including agriculture, food processing, hospitality and aged care. All honourable members would be aware of workforce challenges in these industries. The scheme is vital for filling workplace shortages in regional Australia and ensuring businesses can continue supporting their communities when there are limited local workers available.

The scheme remains uncapped and will continue to grow as long as there is demand from Australian businesses. There are currently more than 37,000 pre-screened workers across the Pacific who are waiting to work in Australia. In the Northern Territory, which hosts over 1,000 workers, we've recently seen 215 arrive from Samoa and 151 from Vanuatu to pick mangoes. They were very welcome, of course. The last of the mangoes are in the markets at the moment, actually. Many of them were picked by those workers.

Thirty-five Samoans have also served as aged-care and disability support workers in remote areas of the Territory, where we can really struggle for workforce. Last March we saw 150 more seasonal workers from Fiji and Timor-Leste arrive in Darwin and Alice Springs to bolster the Territory's tourism, hospitality, aged-care, disability and agricultural workforces.

Indeed, just the other day, returning from the air show down at Avalon, I chatted with a bunch of great blokes from Timor-Leste. One of them, Tino, has work at the Humpty Doo Barramundi farm, south-east of Darwin. He'd been using the opportunity not only to earn an income to support his brother's education but also to develop his own skills and to learn more about leadership. He has a good reputation as a hard worker and dedicates himself to excellence. 'I try to be the best I can be,' he said.

Thanks to the hundreds of workers like Tino, the scheme makes a massive contribution to the Territory. It also boosts the Pacific and Timor-Leste's economies by lifting families out of poverty. This program is a real driver of economic development in the Pacific. It will continue to succeed and grow under our government. (Time expired)

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise and support the member for Riverina's fine motion in support of the PALM scheme, an initiative of the coalition government. It succeeded in bringing so many workers from our Pacific family here to Australia to be able to earn a great Australian wage and, of course, have those remittances go back to their families and communities all across the Pacific. It ensures that they have a much higher GDP than they would otherwise and that real prosperity reaches the regions, not through government bureaucracy but directly to families and villages, which I had the opportunity to visit on many occasions as the Minister for International Development and the Pacific.

On those occasions when I did visit workers and saw the PALM scheme in action in different countries throughout the Pacific I found exactly what this motion is speaking to the parliament today about: people who had been working on the scheme for a long time, people who were repeat workers, and farmers who had developed great relationships and links with people. It's a very successful scheme that deserves great attention from the Albanese government.

I'll speak a little bit now about some of the reforms that the Albanese government has made and some of the challenges that they might face, but I would just endorse, of course, that the Minister for International Development and the Pacific really does need to set ambitious targets, because this is a temporary visa scheme. And a temporary visa scheme is entirely appropriate for this kind of genuine engagement with different Pacific countries. It has had great benefits, working very well. So we'd encourage them to expand it. We'd encourage them to keep meeting the shortages in regions and to also look at the former government's very successful agricultural visa that was proposed as a longer term solution.

One word of caution I would add to the government's plans in relation to the Migration Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific and Other Measures) Bill 2023—that is, for the people listening, the green-card-style system that the government did have in its election policy, to be fair to it, though it was not spoken about—is that the unintended consequences of having a green-card system for the Pacific could be quite severe. The intention of the government in this regard for Pacific workers has been that it will deepen engagement with Pacific countries. But we've seen from New Zealand's system—and they speak to the New Zealand system—that often these kinds of initiatives can lead to depopulation of Pacific countries, which is not something that we want to see.

It can also sometimes lead to what is colloquially referred to as brain drain, where talented and smart young people migrate out of those countries when Pacific societies need as much investment in them. It was a policy objective of the previous government to invest in the countries, to invest in capacity, to invest in skills building. To me it is a great concern that the government may not have thought through the impact of their amendment to the Migration Act in relation to the green-card system that they're modelling on the United States one. While some people will say it's fantastic to bring people from the Pacific here on a permanent basis, I think the impact on those Pacific communities may be underestimated, and it's not something I think Australia would like to see over the long term. So I would urge the government to have some caution there.

To bring people's families out with workers, as well, can present serious accommodation challenges around Australia. We've seen that already. We have shortages of accommodation. We still don't have the formula right for rural and regional councils and mayors to build accommodation that is good quality but is low cost and is able to sustain workforces. More family members, including women and children predominantly but also other male family members, can put an additional burden on the accommodation system around Australia.

I would urge the government to look at the PALM scheme as a model of success. It's a very successful scheme, as the member for Riverina has highlighted. It deserves our full endorsement in our approach. Some of the measures the government is trialling are controversial, to my mind. They may not have thought through the direct policy work that is needed to back up a green-card system—a total change of policy direction—and the outcome that might happen in Pacific countries, as well as the detailed work that needs to go into the accommodation inside Australia and the other factors that we've seen can be quite challenging when people come here for regional work.

The success of the PALM scheme was in its very successful design and the return that went to the workers. We're thrilled to see so many Pacific Island family members coming back to Australia, taking up those work opportunities. There will be many, many more. We strongly support the PALM scheme. It is a temporary visa scheme, but it works, and it sends back skilled workers, with high amounts of remittances over time back into those communities, in some cases forming a substantial part of the GDP of many of those Pacific countries. It's a great investment from a coalition government. We urge the government to strongly support PALM and to keep PALM going but also to carefully consider the impact of their policy changes.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased to speak on the PALM private members' motion, and the member for Riverina and his work in the space. As we know, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme has been a vital component in fulfilling the labour needs of businesses across the country, particularly in regional Australia. We know that currently there are 35,000 workers in the country doing exactly that. Over 3,400 of those people are in my state of Western Australia; this was reported in the Countryman, a local agricultural paper. That pretty well highlights how important this scheme is in my part of the world, where there are such significant labour shortages. In government, we saw this as a really useful scheme—which it has proven to be, as other speakers have acknowledged. It was a result of the former government's streamlining of the Seasonal Workers Program and the Pacific labour scheme together. That benefited the workers, the farmers, the businesses and even the communities from where the workers came. They have filled absolutely critical roles throughout the electorate, whether in seasonal work of various sorts—in harvesting, in pruning, in picking and packing—or in longer-term positions like those in the food processing or care industry, like aged care.

Capecare, an aged-care facility in Dunsborough in my electorate, have had difficulty securing workers. Through the PALM scheme, they have filled eight crucial vacancies and are looking at potentially increasing that number. This is really important to Capecare. They provide fantastic services for people in the aged-care sector in my part of the world. They have recently, in the last few years, with some assistance, through the Building Better Regions Fund, built an aged-care facility that is providing extraordinary services. But, again, as with so many other facilities, the biggest issue is not having sufficient staff. This is replicated right across the regions and right across Australia, but to see the people from the PALM scheme part of this—they have been extremely valuable workers in each of the sectors they've been engaged in. The former government basically encouraged those in the aged-care worker space and supported aged-care employers to recruit people through the PALM scheme, acknowledging this was a real issue. That was one of the focuses of the PALM scheme itself.

Admittedly, some of those people, with the great shortage of accommodation in regional areas, have bought homes to house their workers in because there are no other options. We've seen such broad worker shortages. One of my abattoirs has 187 of the PALM scheme workers. We know that they come from so many different countries, be they from Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG, Samoa, the Solomons, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Vanuatu or Tuvalu. The people-to-people connections and the relationships that have been built as part of this have really been, in some smaller communities, a massive input into those smaller communities. The vital remittance flows that have gone back to the families and the communities they come from are a major bonus for those economies and for the individual families. The opportunities that come into those communities as a result of the income earned out of Australia are incredibly vital.

When I was in the Solomons, going back a few years, there was a gentleman who—and Australia is so good at what it does in the Pacific in supporting our Pacific neighbours; this is just one way—walked several days to let me know, as a result of Australia's aid, what he was able to do with coconuts in the compression and the sale of those to various buyers. He was so delighted he was able to put his grandson through school. That young boy would have had no opportunity to do so otherwise, and that's what this scheme has also assisted with.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the last federal election, in April 2022 I was at a forum organised by AgForce Queensland—a Politics in the Pub in the Grand Hotel in Esk, in Somerset in my electorate. I was pleased to talk both formally in the debate and informally outside it about how Labor would reform, improve and expand the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme. I commend the member for Riverina for his optimism and his political chutzpah in giving credit to the former government in relation to the expansion of the scheme under the current federal Labor government, where we saw the total number of workers rise to over 35,000 by the end of last year. It's a milestone that we achieved six months early. It's important for the Australian economy, and it's important for my electorate of Blair, a regional and rural electorate in South-East Queensland.

PALM workers are earning an income, developing skills and filling workforce shortages across 28 industries, including agriculture and food processing. It's particularly important to those two industries in my electorate, in terms of agriculture in rural Ipswich and the Somerset region, and in terms of meat processing at places like JBS at Dinmore and at other meat-processing facilities at Coominya and Kilcoy. But it's also important for the accommodation, hospitality and aged-care sectors, and, with great shortages in aged care, it's important for this scheme to operate. It's vital not just in my electorate but around the country, and workers in the scheme are employed under the same industry awards and legislation as Australian workers. That's important for the integrity of the scheme.

Employers must meet stringent criteria to participate, including compliance with workplace regulations and health and safety laws. Nine Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste are participating in the scheme, which is boosting economies and lifting families out of poverty. The reforms that we are making are familial, in terms of bringing families across, and financial, in assisting people in the scheme. In a region where more than a third of the people live on less than $1,000 a year, the ability to send home in excess of $10,000 or $15,000 in remittances is a huge economic boost for these families and the region.

We're delivering on our commitment to expand, reform and improve the scheme. It's a commitment we made before the election, and of course we commit to both addressing the Pacific's economic challenges and easing Australia's agricultural workforce shortages by reforming the Seasonal Worker Program and expanding the Pacific Labour Scheme. We said we'd ensure the federal government meets upfront travel costs for Pacific workers under the Seasonal Worker Program—that's the financial benefit—to increased the attractiveness of the program for Australian farmers. That was a point I made during a debate in April 2020 to a forum who weren't always my way inclined in terms of their political disposition.

We promised we'd make it easier for Pacific workers to fill labour shortages across the country and bring their family members there. That's exactly what we are doing. We've dedicated an agricultural visa stream under PALM and created a robust and sustainable four-year visa with portability, some strong oversight mechanisms and protection and rights for workers. This is about improving lives, mitigating critical skills shortages and contributing to our economy and to the economic resilience of the region.

In the member for Riverina's motion, he claims that recent additional growth in PALM numbers is due to the previous government's commitment, but I think he should look back at the history of this particular scheme. I would remind him that it was actually the Rudd Labor government that introduced the first Pacific labour mobility program in Australia, the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme, in 2008. Indeed, a lot of the policy work was done by Labor in opposition, prior to the 2007 election, by the then shadow minister for the Pacific Islands, Bob Sercombe, and his office, and it highlighted the two-way economic and foreign policy benefits of a Pacific seasonal worker program.

So those opposite can't claim credit for a program that we initiated and we've made improvements to since we've got into power. It's important to not get engaged in a bit of historical revisionism here and to tell the truth. It was Labor government scheme. It's a Labor government improvement on the scheme, and Labor's making a big difference to people. These workers will address important skills shortages. It'll help farmers in my electorate, and it'll help meat processors like JBS with their workforce shortages. I'm looking forward to working with those employers in my area to achieve better outcomes.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be an order of the day for the next sitting.