Man hospitalised without Medicare after being set ablaze shows precarity of Pacific Island fruit pickers

A Pacific farmworker who left his fruit picking job to work for a labour hire company ended up in hospital, without access to Medicare, after he was allegedly set alight by another worker.

Sione Lavalu spent 74 days in the Royal Brisbane hospital with stage three burns earlier this year. When he was first admitted, almost half his body was affected, and doctors told his family he had a 20% chance of surviving.

Lavalu spent four years flying in and out of Australia to pick fruit on farms until early 2020, when Covid hit and he could not get home to Tonga.

Late in 2021, Lavalu went to work for a labour hire construction company in Brisbane, which put him in a house with other Pacific Islander workers, his family said.

They allege for the six months he worked there, he lived in a cramped house with other workers and the company did not offer any health insurance.

On 30 January 2022, it is alleged a fight broke out between the men at the house.

Lavalu was put in the shower and an ambulance was called.

Queensland police charged a 26-year-old with acts intended to cause grievous bodily harm in relation to the incident.

There are about 22,830 people from the Pacific Islands in Australia under the Palm program. It allows Australian businesses to hire workers on a special visa designed to fill labour shortages in regional Australia.

His family, which includes his Sydney-based brother Manase, has been struggling to get help. They set up a GoFundMe to try to raise the $79,000 he now owes in medical bills but after receiving just over $400 it was cancelled.

Lavalu was previously supporting his wife and five children back home. His case highlights how vulnerable Pacific Islander fruit pickers can be.

Comparatively, 225 were reported to have absconded the year before that, and five years ago it was just 117.

Stories of low pay, poor conditions and unsatisfactory housing plague the program. Across the Pacific, it is often likened to blackbirding.

On its website, the company states it offers qualified and certified construction workers for jobs across Queensland.

The company, which the Guardian has chosen not to name, said it had offered legal employment to Lavalu and had not housed him.

A spokesperson for Dfat, which now runs the Palm scheme, would not comment on individual cases. They said usually an employer paid for health insurance for four weeks after a worker absconded but then they were on their own.

*Name changed for privacy reasons