Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I want to follow on from the member for Bruce, who I have to say, having watched him and read some of the Hansard, puts a lot of thought and consideration into these issues and, importantly, in terms of this contribution, speaks with a great deal of passion—rightly so—about this issue. I want to welcome his contributions in terms of this debate and thank him for his work in regard to the inquiry.

He is absolutely right in bringing a spotlight to the National Party in this because the National Party has a big interest in this and they do, as the member for Bruce rightly suggested, need to speak up on this. In particular, the National Party's claims that they represent rural interests; want the agriculture sector to do better; and, on top of that, back in the National Farmers Federation's ambition that we as a nation be able to generate $100 billion out of agriculture are not going to be something achieved miraculously or by magic. It takes a lot of people to achieve this. By people, I mean not just the businesses that are run there but also the people who work within them, the labour that is required to make all this happen. This is a very ambition target, $100 billion by 2030, that the National Farmers Federation put forward and that the government has backed, and yet the Liberal-National government have simply no plan to address agriculture workforce shortages that exist and have been worsened through the course of the pandemic.

The Nationals themselves are quite silent on this. They might, as the member for Bruce indicated, make all these private or off the record views known to certainly Labor about how they think this needs to be addressed, but they're not doing anything publicly on it. Certainly the Liberal-National government don't have a plan to stop the spread of exploitation of backpackers, and the slavery like conditions in some cases, that have become all too common across Australia. For example, the horticultural industry in our nation is crying out for the Liberal-National government to provide a durable solution to labour shortages because they're acutely aware that rogue operators and labour hire firms are exploiting people, particularly in regional Australia, where it's thought that out of sight is out of mind. The minister scrambled at the eleventh hour to get together a half-baked code that was first rejected by the states' chief medical officers, couldn't attract the unanimous support of the states and doesn't work for farmers.

In this report, the committee recommended:

… that the Government consider additional concessions to SHEV and TPV holders who undertake at least one year of agricultural or horticultural work in a regional area, and are prepared to settle in a regional areas …

This is a timely recommendation when we consider the current state of the agricultural workforce. My only question is: how many reports, committees and meetings does the Liberal-National government need to get off its hands and start delivering real solutions for Australian farmers? I suspect this is a question that is being posed not just by me; it is also being posed by the agriculture sector.

As I said, the Liberal-National government simply has no plan to address these shortages. It's also a great surprise to me that not only do they have no plan but, when I read estimates—for example, when the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, ABARES, appeared—the government doesn't even track the shortages through its own bodies. In reading the Hansard, I was stunned that, when ABARES was asked this by the committee back in October. They apparently released a labour survey on 17 September. It didn't provide estimates of shortages or gaps; it provided an estimate of labour use through the year. In relation to the labour workforce shortages, they claimed: 'The gap is a difficult thing to measure.' When farmers are worried and say that product—for example, fruit—is just going to rot on trees, I can't believe, and I think a lot of Australians would find it hard to believe, that there's no ability to determine how many people are actually needed to get the job done on Australian farms.

On top of that, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on the fact that a lot of governments, including state governments, have been thinking a lot about attracting people to regional areas to assist with the workforce needs of the agriculture sector. I'm particularly mindful that, through AGMIN, which brings together ministers from across the country, state ministers have been recommending some pretty good ideas to the government about what needs to be done to attract more labour into the agriculture sector during this time of pandemic. These ideas have simply been ignored or have not been responded to in a timely way by the agriculture minister.

There is a pattern to this minister. He loves making announcements. He loves rattling off dollar figures. He loves being able to suggest that there is a plan in place. But the delivery is the test, and this minister, in particular, is all talk and no action whatsoever in this sector. I think he is being found out more and more for that. When you raise issues, as the member for Bendigo did during consideration in detail, when she raised concerns about exploitation, he gets into a huff about that. He gets into a huff about any suggestion that there's exploitation. No-one's suggesting that the entire sector embraces this. In fact, the sector rightly wants to stamp this out. They want to stamp out the rogue operators and the bad and dodgy labour hire firms because they understand that Australians would rightly be shocked and appalled if the food on their tables or the food in their kids' lunch boxes had been picked by exploited backpackers working on Australian farms. If the exploitation we read or hear about is what is happening under the Liberal-National government, through their legal visa program, imagine what's taking place under the cover of the dodginess of illegal operators. It's not enough for the agriculture minister to come into budget consideration in detail and beat his chest and give us the big drama act about how offended he is that there is a suggestion of exploitation. People know it's out there, and it has to be dealt with, because local farmers are the victims of the Morrison government's failures too. They're being faced with these shortages, as well as with the risk of hiring illegal workers.

As I said before, our horticultural industry is crying out for some sort of leadership on this front, because they know what impact this is having on them. During a global pandemic and the first recession in three decades, fruit and vegetables cannot and must not be left to rot on farms across Australia. But, after seven years of being in power, this Liberal-National government still doesn't have a plan for important parts of our economy—specifically, agriculture. So, absolutely, we do need to see better.

By the end of October, we'd seen the launch of the National Agricultural Labour Advisory Committee. They launched this last year, well before COVID. It was tasked to create a strategy for the ag workforce. Despite the increased pressure, particularly on horticultural farmers, the government pushed back the deadline, from July to the end of October, and at the end of that month we saw nothing more than a literature review. As I said, we saw AGMIN tasked with the creation of an agricultural workers code to be presented to and agreed upon by national cabinet. The minister scrambled at the eleventh hour to get together a half-baked code, which was first rejected by the state chief medical officers. Our federal agricultural minister couldn't even attract the unanimous support of the states, and now farmers are still waiting.

As always, this mob can't get it together. They can be there for the press conference and the announcement and to draft the media release, but not for the solution. The strategy, the code, themselves—all are a flop. I certainly hope the government starts to listen to state counterparts, the recommendation from the Joint Standing Committee on Migration and, indeed, the farmers who want to see the delivery of meaningful solutions to the workforce shortages affecting the sector. We definitely need to see better and we definitely need a minister that can deliver. We don't need the delivery of more announcements. We don't need more media stunts. We need tangible results, and we are not going to get them out of this agricultural minister.

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