Fruit farm calls for employee-sponsorship channel in new Pacific visa

For the last three years, Quinnita Billy and her husband, George, have been returning to Australia in the harvesting season to work on farms.

Billy and her husband have been employed on farms around the country, where they have come and gone on a seasonal basis as per the conditions of their Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (Palm) visa.

Her employer, Red Rich Fruits, said they worked hard to retain skilled and experienced workers like the Vanuatuan couple.

According to an agricultural commodities report by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, released on Tuesday, the proportion of Palm workers as a percentage of all contract farmer workers jumped from 58% in 2019-20 to 82% in 2021-22, and the growth is expected to continue.

The productivity of seasonal workers is 20% higher than people on working holiday visas, Abares said, and that is also expected to increase because the Palm scheme now allows workers to remain in Australia for up to four years. Returning seasonal workers, it said, are 15% more productive than new seasonal workers.

But the new visa has slightly different aims than the Palm scheme.

This was echoed Stephen Howes, an economics professor at Australian National University, who said it was good that the new Pacific engagement visa was not tied to a specific employer.

Laurie Berg, a law professor at UTS, agreed. Berg specialises in the rights of temporary migrant workers in Australia. She warned that employee-sponsored visas could leave workers even more vulnerable to exploitation.

Palise said Red Rich Fruits tcurrently employs 60 Pacific Islanders on a rotational basis through their farms in Gayndah, the Yarra Valley in Victoria, and near Darwin.

Employees are paid on hourly rates and also charged $120 a week for their accomodation and bills.

The farming operations manager Tim Teague said the on-site accomodationallowed them to retain expertise and a workforce that genuinely wanted to be there.

Teague manages Billy and her husband on one of the companies farms in Gayndah.

Palise said the company had invested heavily in housing and transport for their workers, a process that he said was made more challenging by government regulation. This included strict rules for constructing any new accomodation facilities, and unique specifications for building employee housing.

Twenty-six per cent of all litigations filed with the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2021-22 involved the treatment of migrant workers.