Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee, Perspectives on the future of the harvest labour force, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This report, Perspectives on the future of the harvest labour force, has been an extremely interesting report to make. I would like to thank my fellow senators, particularly Senator Barnett, Senator Marshall, who is not here in the parliament today, and Senator McEwen and Senator Campbell, who were interested participants in the inquiry.

The question of using contract labour from the Pacific Islands is not a new one in the sense that there have been many answers posed as to what the growing industry of horticulture could use to take the crop off on a seasonal basis when such labour can be quite difficult to find. Horticulture is a growing industry. Based on my agricultural experience, I think it is something like the third-largest agricultural industry in this country. Its production and harvest are characterised usually by short, intense growing periods at the end of which, there can be no doubt, the fruit has to be harvested straightaway so as to get the product in premium condition. Australia has made a great name for itself in export markets by producing first-class citrus, mangoes, olives, avocados and other stone fruit, which usually occur in the November to March period when temperatures are hotter. Therefore, this sort of work is usually done under very hot working conditions, which some people may consider to be unpleasant.

There have been intermittent labour shortages in horticulture. At present, the picking force, if I can term it that, is usually made up of backpackers, many of whom undertake this sort of work as a way of boosting their income during their working holiday maker trips to Australia. Many of them are on a 12-month visa and can work for only a particular amount of time—although I was pleased to see that the department of immigration have extended their possible stay by making it possible for them to have a second term, provided that they work in regional and rural areas on their first job. So backpackers are a part of the labour market.

The section of the population often termed ‘grey nomads’—that is, usually semiretired or retired people over the age of 40 or 50 who have decided to travel around Australia as a way of spending their retirement—often take up this sort of work to provide themselves with extra funds. It was pointed out to us that that supply of labour is less reliable now that the conditions for Centrelink payments revolve around fortnightly reporting of income rather than annual averaging reporting of income, and that people are not so willing to do it because of the fluctuating nature of their income.

As well as that, there is still what I might call a permanent part-time local and itinerant labour force of people that have made a career out of picking fruit. They often used to move from Queensland down through New South Wales to the Riverina area of Victoria and thus get perhaps six months of picking. But because of unreliability of transport, possibly the cost of petrol and the level and standard of accommodation that is often provided, this is seen as less reliable. Pickers, and particularly some of the farming and horticultural organisations, say to us that they cannot get workers.

The report talks about the conditions that they sometimes have. For instance, in paragraph 2.18, the report discusses the evidence of a picker with over 20 years experience and the wages that he got. The farming organisations told us that even if they offered higher wages, given that this is a fairly low-wage form of income, they would not be able to get local labour and that that was why they were looking for alternative sources of labour. The very experienced picker with 20 years experience that spoke to the committee told us that because pickers are paid on piece rates—that is, per piece of fruit picked—it does not necessarily result in higher wages. Often the picking was slowed down because of the fact that pickers would have to grade the fruit at the same time, which often resulted in lower wages. It also depended on the quality of the crop. He also said to us that some farms were managed worse than others, which could mean a great reduction in the quality of the fruit. Also, as I said, there are the travel costs.

The farming organisations were very strong about the fact that they needed labour but, apart from anecdotal accounts, the committee was unable to discern that there was a permanent shortage of labour in this field. It is certainly intermittent, but we had varying descriptions of the shortages that farmers have. Balanced against that, of course, we have to look at the arguments against importing contract labour from the Pacific Islands. There has certainly been heightened sensitivity about entry arrangements for foreign workers amongst political parties during the last 12 months. Certainly, the 457 visa arrangements, which bring in skilled workers, would preclude harvest workers. The ACTU and some other organisations put to us that local employment would be affected. Some community action groups who would like to see more labour come into their area advocated Chinese workers rather than Pacific islands workers, but the committee, I think it is fair to say, did not treat this as a serious component of the argument.

There has been a Canadian experiment along those lines—importing Mexican workers—but, although it had some advantages, the fact that Mexican workers were tied to one farm for the total duration of their visa would, we thought, sometimes mean that, if conditions on that farm proved to be unsatisfactory, the worker would have no recourse and would have to keep on working in substandard conditions, and it would not be a success. There was also the problem of people who may overstay their visa at the end of their contract and perhaps disappear into the community.

Certainly as a government member on this committee I felt that domestic concerns were a priority and we had to look at the question of importing foreign labour as against using our own. There is no doubt that heavy investment in agriculture is to come in the future. We looked at thousands of acres that have been put in, in almonds, avocados and olives. All of those may well be mechanically harvested, but the high premium that Australian growers can get for unblemished, perfect fruit often means that the fruit has to be picked and graded by hand. The prospect of having a labour force imported from the Pacific islands may be more likely in the future.

I think it is fair to say that some members of the committee perhaps changed their minds during the course of this. This started off as a references committee inquiry. We were looking at what we might decide, and I anticipated that we would perhaps bring down a majority report and a minority report. The committee, almost at the end of this inquiry, became the substantive committee under the Senate committee changes, but I think it is fair to say that the committee had decided on the sort of report that it was going to make before the committee changed. I mention that change in committee for the information of the Senate.

I am pleased that it is virtually a consensus report. I would like to thank very much the deputy chair, Senator Gavin Marshall, who is not here, the other Labor members, the other committee members and the staff, particularly Mr John Carter, the committee secretary. Every effort was made to see that we had a varied range of opinion from pickers—as I said, one of whom we saw—community representatives who undoubtedly had the benefits for their region at heart and the residents of Robinvale, where a pilot program with workers from Tonga is almost in place. Certainly everyone contributed. I would like to thank those members who travelled to the Far North, which I did not. We did get as wide a view as possible and I am satisfied that the committee has brought down a comprehensive report which states the facts in a plain but interesting manner.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also would like to make a few comments on the report, Perspectives on the future of the harvest labour force. I will also commence by thanking the other members of the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee for their exemplary work on this, including Senator George Campbell, Senator Gavin Marshall, Senator Troeth and Senator Barnett. I note that Senator Gavin Marshall was the chair of this committee when it started life as a references committee and I am sure he would have wished to speak about this report had he been here today. I would also like to apologise to Senator Marshall that I was unable to convince the other members of the committee to call this report ‘The Marshall Plan’. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat, who assisted the committee with the inquiry, especially Mr John Carter and Mr David Sullivan, who accompanied us on several flights in very small planes to far-flung regions and who stoically stood with us in many packing sheds and orchards.

As our committee chair, Senator Troeth, has indicated, this was an inquiry that resulted in a unanimous report with some additional comments by Senator Barnett. The committee’s inquiry was prompted by calls from some grower organisations for the contracting of unskilled labour from abroad, at least on a trial basis. That would probably have involved the establishment of a new visa category for unskilled workers separate from the now controversial 457 visa category.

Committee members listened carefully to growers and grower organisations from around the country as they described the circumstances in which they found themselves at harvest time. We agreed that the shortage of labour in the horticultural industry was evident in some places at particular times. Nevertheless, the committee concluded overall that in current circumstances there was no need to implement any radical solution to the seasonal labour scarcity. The government’s strong opposition to the type of unskilled contract labour scheme proposed by some in the horticultural industry has been made clear, and I have to say our side of politics is no more enthusiastic. That said, I believe the committee did look objectively at the evidence, as Senator Troeth said, particularly in relation to labour needs at a time of considerable expansion in the industry.

The committee is also far less inclined to the dogmatism expressed by some other government members and the dogmatism that the government appears to have about foreign contract unskilled labour. As this report indicates, circumstances may require a policy change in that regard. There may in future be a strong case for implementing a foreign contract labour scheme for horticulture. The declining numbers in the current harvest labour force, the precariousness of the backpacker labour supply, which is very vulnerable to external factors, and the rising levels of agribusiness investment all point to the likelihood of increased labour pressures in future years.

The period when the committee was conducting visits and taking evidence coincided with increasing evidence that some employers are abusing the 457 visa scheme and that the government’s lack of oversight of the scheme is allowing that abuse to occur. The problems encountered with 457 visas in the meat industry, the building and construction industry and other areas of skill shortages certainly sharpened the sensitivities of the committee with regard to what contractual arrangements must apply in the event that there is any kind of harvest labour scheme as envisaged in the committee report. The committee has dealt with those issues substantially in chapter 4 of its report, and I urge senators to have a look at that chapter in particular.

Growers were clear about the current difficulties they faced. The committee accepts the validity of some claims that labour was not always available at times which were most advantageous in achieving the highest possible return on produce. On the other hand, the committee was unconvinced of claims that crops were lost because there was no-one to harvest them. Such isolated occasions when this might have occurred are suspected by the committee to have been more the result of mismanagement than anything else.

Mismanagement in this industry occurs at two levels: first, with horticultural practices which result in substandard crops—which are, incidentally, often hard to pick and bring low returns to fruit pickers, who are paid on a piecework basis—and, second, with regard to mismanagement of labour that was indicated by the very poor pay and conditions and the scant regard for the welfare of employees by many employers in this industry.

In a free labour market, as we have, where pickers have an effective grapevine of their own and can avoid working for bad employers because of the shortage of labour, it is not surprising that some growers would be attracted to the use of what they perceive to be docile foreign labour, which they imagine would be much cheaper as well. As the report states, committee members held a number of informal meetings with growers which in some cases indicated that labour costs, as much as timely availability, were factors in their support for foreign labour. Some growers unashamedly extolled the virtues of using labour hire firms to bring in workers from China and Korea. Some growers made outrageous claims about what kind of incomes people could make from fruit picking, but all the concrete evidence was that for most Australians this is a very low-income industry to work in.

The committee did not see too many wealthy fruit-pickers, I have to say. The award rate, including a casual loading, for this work is currently in the order of $15.38 per hour, and we found that, to keep their expenses low, pickers sometimes sleep in their cars or in very rough campgrounds near to orchards and occasionally in onsite accommodation that, in the committee’s view, might just be okay for a holidaying backpacker for a couple of weeks but was nowhere near the standard acceptable for either Australian or imported contract labour. To give the industry its due, however, many grower organisations were conscious of the need to maintain proper employment standards in the industry and realised that this was a factor in the lack of people willing to come and work in the horticultural industry.

Some other observations arising from the evidence to the committee may be of interest. First, the committee was rather surprised—dismayed, even—to find that even large agribusinesses have apparently failed to factor into their business plans the increasing labour scarcity. This is all the more remarkable given that this is such a labour intensive industry, particularly in the premium produce end of the market. But from many management people in the newly planted and planned large orchards, which are often funded by managed investment schemes, we got a shrug of the shoulders when we asked: ‘Where are you actually going to source the labour to work this orchard?’ It was a somewhat disturbing response.

Second, the issue of using welfare recipients in orchards and vineyards was again kicked about by the committee. Growers were, to say the least, unenthusiastic about relying on people currently in receipt of welfare benefits to fill labour shortages. Some growers were totally unsympathetic to the unemployed; others acknowledged that people who had been unemployed for a long period of time often had physical impediments, disabilities or other responsibilities that would anyway prevent them from doing the long days and the very hard and very physical work that is the lot of most fruit-pickers.

Third, the committee was concerned with the overdependence on backpacker labour. Not only is this a precarious and unreliable source of labour, it is also discouraging improved working conditions for traditional seasonal labourers. Young backpackers are highly prized workers who stay only until they hear that the surf is up at Byron Bay or Bells Beach, and then they are off. While they are staying in the orchard they do not complain about the pay or living conditions in remote areas, and that sets the tone for ongoing fairly poor employment conditions.

Finally, the committee agreed that any future imported labour should be sourced from Pacific Islands Forum nations and be based on agreements with each of those countries. It must be properly regulated with regard to wages and working conditions, so as to eliminate any likelihood of exploitation. The committee received a number of submissions regarding the importance of Pacific nation participation in regional economic growth and we accepted the thrust of those arguments, particularly with regard to the value of overseas remittances to the economies of our near neighbours. While Pacific Islands Forum nations will undoubtedly be disappointed in the findings of this report, I note that the committee’s brief was substantially to address employment issues in Australian horticulture and not Australia’s foreign policy.

It may appear unusual to table a report without formal recommendations, but I think the position of the committee on a number of key issues is clear and unambiguous. The government should note the committee’s advice in any future policy development relating to the matter of contracting harvest labour from the South Pacific.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the report, Perspectives on the future of the harvest labour force, because I think it is an important one in one of many different areas in the extremely multifaceted immigration environment. I should state from the outset that I was not as involved in the inquiry as the previous two speakers; I was not able to get to any of the public hearings, but I did read many of the submissions and some of the Hansard transcripts. For a variety of reasons I will not go into here, I was not as fully involved in a few other stages along the way as I would have liked but, having said that, I think it is a valuable report.

A word I would probably use to describe it is ‘tentative’. Even though it does not have recommendations, it does have components that set forward conclusions and certainly make some very strong suggestions. They are not strong enough to be recommendations, but they are suggestions. I find myself in the not overly common position of agreeing with Senator Barnett, who put in some supplementary comments to this report. His view—if I could speak for him, based on the supplementary comments in the report—is basically that he does propose a targeted and tightly controlled pilot scheme of Pacific island workers to meet a demonstrated labour force need in a certain area over a given period. This idea of taking that extra, still tentative, but concrete step forward—not so much dipping the toe in the water to test the temperature but actually taking a more concrete step than that—of a pilot program is one that I support. My general feeling is less tentative than the body of the committee report about it being worth exploring this proposed measure more specifically.

We have an interesting dynamic operating in the immigration arena, not just in Australia but elsewhere. We have people who are basically running a protectionist line, saying, ‘We don’t want people coming in here and impacting on wages and conditions.’ And we have people from the other side, from what would normally be seen as more of the free market side, and for different, broader immigration policy and so-called border control reasons—a big misnomer—who are also being reticent about letting people in.

It is a curious alliance where you have protectionist sentiments and free market but nationalist sentiments aligning. I think that is undesirable. There is a real problem with the aversion of both the government and the union movement, for different reasons, to considering the approach of allowing people from the Pacific island region, New Guinea, East Timor and countries like that to do short-term work—whether you call them guest workers or short-term seasonal labour—whilst very consciously and deliberately bringing in over 100,000 people a year through the working holiday visa program, predominantly from Europe, North America, Japan and so on. I do not think it is any great surprise that people in the Pacific island region see a double standard there—that we are willing to allow over 100,000 people a year from Western Europe and North America through on working holiday visa programs to fill these sorts of seasonal jobs.

That working holiday visa program is very much promoted. When the numbers were expanded by Minister Vanstone just recently it was very strongly promoted. The reason for doing that was to meet demand for seasonal work. I do not have a problem with that, I might emphasise, but we have a program that brings in 100,000 people a year specifically to address shortfalls in the seasonal labour market and yet we are saying to people from our own region, the Pacific islands and nearby, ‘No, you cannot come in and do that short-term work.’ There is a double standard there that I have a lot of problems with, frankly. That is why I am supportive of the flavour of Senator Barnett’s additional comment of having a trial pilot program.

There were recommendations along similar lines, particularly in the submission from Oxfam. The two submissions I found of most benefit—although, certainly, others were good—were the Oxfam one and that from Peter Mares from the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria. I think there is a valid argument for enabling labourers from our region to fill gaps. It is true it is hard to determine precisely how big, how extensive and how permanent those gaps in the unskilled seasonal labour market are. It is one of those perplexities of the debate that it is hard to pin down. There is a valid concern about people who can be easily exploited getting stuck in poor conditions and exploited.

The sort of program that is used in Canada is one that was recommended as being worth particular attention. It seems to be working quite well. I particularly notice that Senator Barnett says in his comments that this is not just about being nice and neighbourly and helping people from less well off neighbouring countries to come in and earn a bit of income; there are benefits for the Australian economy. As mentioned in Senator Barnett’s additional comments, the evidence from Mr Mares and Nic Maclellan was that such a scheme would create jobs and investment in the local area concerned rather than take jobs from locals. In fact, the Canadian experience has been that temporary labour schemes create 2.6 jobs in the supply and processing sectors for every one in horticulture.

There are economic benefits for Australia, and that is logical. If there is a genuine gap in the labour market that has not been adequately met, and if we can get it met that would ensure that the full wealth-generating opportunities that are there are maximised. It is worth emphasising, though, that this certainly should not be seen as the panacea, that we should just open this up and let any number of people in as the single solution to gaps in the lesser skilled labour market. It is best addressed on one front.

One issue that I think we need to look at again is some of the restrictions in our social security laws. We actually have a very strong disincentive built into our social security laws for people on income support payments to go to regional areas because they get penalised for moving to areas of higher unemployment. If they are going to get enough work to not qualify for income support then that is not a problem, obviously. But that is not always guaranteed; as has been mentioned, this is an unreliable labour opportunity area. It just adds that bit of extra disincentive to people who think, ‘If I am going to go to try my luck somewhere else, I will end up being penalised in my income support payments.’ It really means that they have to be absolutely certain that they are going to earn enough reliable income for them to take that leap. Given the current wider employment market circumstances, that is an issue we need to consider as well.

Whilst the committee report does not have specific recommendations, I do concur with its findings and conclusions, particularly at the end of chapter 2. It suggests that an immediate seasonal contract labour scheme is not justified, and I agree with that. We do not need to put in place a fully fledged scheme straightaway. But it does also emphasise that this does not mean government policy inaction. Pronouncements by the government which categorically reject the use of unskilled workers from the Pacific region are neither forward looking nor conducive to policy development. Similarly, claims by sections of the union movement that bringing in unskilled seasonal workers from overseas would steal local jobs, drive down wages and inevitably create a new class of working poor, is not an automatic argument against doing anything. As it says there, the answer lies in adequate regulation, and adequate enforcement of that regulation.

The report is fairly honest about why it is tentative. It has the interesting sentence:

It is difficult for committee members to disregard the influences which affect them as party members at this moment in the electoral cycle.

I think that is a coded way of saying, ‘This is too big a political hot potato for all of us to go too far at the moment.’ I think it is best to be upfront about those things, and I am not seeking to attack that. It is a perfectly understandable position. It is a difficult issue from a range of perspectives. As the committee recognises, that is no excuse for inaction, and it does not suggest action; it suggests movement. My view is that the movement suggested is a bit more tentative than is necessary. I think we can go further; I think we can go to a pilot program, as Senator Barnett suggests. Personally, I will keep pushing that, as my individual view. I think it is a view that would also be much more comfortable for our Pacific island neighbours. I seek leave to continue my remarks. (Time expired)

Leave granted; debate adjourned.