Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The government of which I'm proud to be a member and of which Senator McMahon is also proud to be a member has worked extremely hard to make sure that we have programs in place so that we can support our farmers through the pandemic. One such program, which is a program that's very close to the hearts of both Minister Payne and me, is the Pacific Labour Scheme. I also acknowledge the amazing advocacy and leadership from Senator McMahon on the matter to make sure that there was an adequate workforce in the Northern Territory to make sure that your mango crop got picked this year. You were faced with a crisis, you came to us, and we were able to solve the problem by bringing in a number of people from Vanuatu to enable the crop in the Northern Territory to be picked. That happened back in September, and it was a great success. In addition to that, the government introduced the Agricultural Workers Code to make sure that the state borders were open. We also introduced AgMove to provide support to people to move to the country, to support our agricultural sector.