Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about a recent visit to Hillwood Berries farms, at Hillwood in northern Tasmania. Hillwood Berries is a national supplier of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. You will often see these wonderful Tasmanian-grown products in Coles and Woolworths across the country. The Dornauf family are proud Tasmanian farmers who have built a strong business that plays an essential role in agriculture and farming across Tasmania. I visited their farm gate with the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, the Hon. Pat Conroy, to announce reforms to make skills training more accessible, flexible and affordable for Pacific Labour Mobility—PALM—scheme workers and their Australian employers.

Hillwood Berries employs over 550 workers from the Asia-Pacific, mostly Tonga and Samoa, as part of this scheme, and they continue to return to Tasmania annually, strengthening ties between our nation and the region, improving their family's opportunities and social mobility at home. Hillwood Berries is a great employer. It has a 70 per cent return rate of workers. Once they work at Hillwood Berries, so many islander workers return again and again. The efficiency and success of this workforce is also building full-time equivalent positions within the business. Consequently, Hillwood Berries is going from strength to strength, with their Bundaberg operation growing to the point where they can now supply berries nationwide all year round.

I spoke to many of the workers at Hillwood, and they all have inspiring stories. Rufina represents just one of those special stories. When she picks berries, she counts the number of punnets she picks to know how many bricks she will be able to purchase that day to build her house back home in Timor-Leste. Every two hours of work at Hillwood translates into one stone to build her family's new house. Such stories are a great example of what this scheme is all about.

Labour mobility is a powerful way of supporting economic development in the Pacific. One-third of Pacific islanders live on less than $1,000 per year. In contrast, the government estimates that the average PALM scheme worker in Australia sends home between $1,000 and $1,300 every month they're working here in Australia. We have 4,200 PALM scheme workers in my home state of Tasmania right now, making a valuable contribution to their home economies and filling critical work shortages in Tasmania. Across Australia there are more than 35,000 PALM scheme workers filling workforce shortages in regional Australia and sending valuable earnings to the Pacific and Timor-Leste. In a region where more than one-third of people live on less than $1,000 per year, long-term PALM workers send home on average $15,000 each, boosting Pacific economies and lifting families out of poverty.

I note the comments of Hillwood Berries General Manager Simon Dornauf:

PALM scheme workers are critical for businesses such as ours but they are also a long way from home and it's vital that we support their development and look after them as best we can.

Workers are making such a valuable contribution both here and at home and they bring so much to this business and community in our part of Tasmania. We regularly receive photos of houses the workers are building at home and the improvements they are making to their lives.

Pacific workers are making such a valuable contribution both here and back in their own communities at home. They're putting food on the table of Australian families and they are the backbone of agriculture in Tasmania right now. They should be celebrated. We thank them for their work. We thank them for enriching our communities. And we thank them for what they're able to contribute back in their home communities to help raise the living standard of their community members. This is a great scheme. It's one that has been improved by the Albanese Labor government. I want to again place on the record my appreciation for Minister Conroy making that visit and allowing me to join and have the opportunity to not only meet many of these workers but hear them sing and dance for us. It was very moving. I want to thank the Dornauf family for what they're doing in helping to build relationships between the Pacific islands and Australia, as this Labor government is doing.