Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I share the minister's bullish vision for agriculture. Indeed, I share the member for Hunter's bullish vision for agriculture. Minister, you haven't had the great privilege of coming to the greatest electorate on earth, and I extend that invitation here and now.

One of the limitations to achieving that herculean objective is going to be the ability for industry to meet agriculture's labour demands. Minister, I, as you do, visit constituents who have invested their hard-earned money in their agricultural endeavour. I visit people who with their own hands have grafted orchards. They make wine. They raise cattle. They raise lambs. I've seen people picking pistachios. But the reality here is that we will only achieve this objective if we find the labour force to do it. I should say as an aside that we will also need to attract the capital to do it, but that's not where my question is directed. My question speaks to and talks about agriculture's labour demand.

Everyone in the House will understand what I say when I say that my electorate suffered a significant loss in the form of the Thomas Foods abattoir at Murray Bridge: 1,500 workers processing meat in my electorate at Murray Bridge. This is a multispecies abattoir. It's both large body and small body. There were 1,500 workers, Minister. Of those 1,500 workers, 500 were Australian; 500, effectively, were on 417 visas; and roughly 500 were on 457 visas. Given the size and scale of this enterprise—to the minister—it is not just small operators who are struggling to source labour. It's even the very largest. Indeed, that particular abattoir is the largest employer in my electorate. It's even the very largest of employers that are struggling in rural, regional and remote Australia to find the workforce they need to deliver the products, as you say, onto the boat and into export markets.

It's one thing for us to have signed world-leading trade deals with the powerhouse economies of northern Asia. It's another thing to have signed them with the TPP-11. It's another thing entirely to be able to meet the demand of these markets. So, at the same time that I see unemployment in some of these rural communities, particularly amongst younger people, and at the same time as we're having—or did have, in recent memory—a debate around the backpackers tax, I have a circumstance in my electorate where I've got high rates of unemployment and yet I've got very high levels of foreign labour.

When I sit down with employers throughout my electorate, they're very keen to use a more sustainable mix of Australian workers. But the reality is that they're forced to use foreign labour because that is the only labour they can source. And I should say thank goodness for the 88-day rule. I'm fairly certain that, if it weren't for that rule, we would have fruit going rotten on the tree and grapes going rotten on the vine; we would have kill slots at abattoirs simply unfilled or unable to be filled; and who knows what would happen to our credibility on the international stage in terms of our ability to meet orders and commitments?

Minister, my question effectively is: what is the government doing to better meet these agricultural labour demands? Minister, this is—and I'm confident in saying this—both the single largest concern for rural constituents who have invested their hard-earned in their rural enterprise and the single largest risk to the federal government in terms of improving our terms of trade when it relates to agricultural exports. We have constituents throughout rural, regional and remote Australia who want to invest and are investing, but, without the labour force to do the work to ensure that these products are delivered to market, we simply won't achieve those bullish targets that, Minister, you're setting for yourself, that I set for myself and that, quite frankly, our nation should expect of us all.

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