Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] There's a lot in this MPI on the government's failure to adequately support the needs of the agricultural sector that I could talk about. We could spend days, if not weeks, talking about this government's failures. The previous speaker had a shopping list of things that they claim are good outcomes for the sector. Many of these programs are riddled with failures. I can't believe anyone is still saying that the Mobile Black Spot Program is a success when all the data suggests that it's not.

But today I'm going to keep my remarks around the workforce. It's an issue that has plagued this government for many years and has only been made worse by the pandemic. The government's latest announcement around the agricultural visa is just more spin and more promise, with very little chance of delivery, and the farmers in our regions know it. They know that this government aren't serious—that they've just worked up a set of words to try and cover up for the fact that they've failed yet again to adequately address the concerns that the farming regions have when it comes to the agricultural workforce.

Over the past 12 months, we've had tens of millions of dollars in produce rotting in the ground, largely because we haven't had the workforce to deal with it. The government says that the new Australian agricultural visa will allow foreigners to work on Australian farms as well as in forestry, meat processing and fisheries. But it's not yet known which overseas countries these people will come from, who has signed up to it, how long people will come here for, what wage rates people will be paid or what conditions people will have, yet the minister is also claiming, as other speakers have, that it will happen by the end of next month. That's a lot of detail to work through in fewer than 40 days. We want to have people on farms after serving two weeks quarantine when we don't not have the places in quarantine to do so. Why would the minister go out there and make a fanciful announcement to the Australian people? Clearly it's just not capable of delivering. The previous speaker said it would be a game changer. How is it going to be a game changer if it's not going to happen?

On Monday, the minister said that the availability of workers to come to work here in the summer harvest would depend upon the quarantine facilities operated by the states and territories—another example of how the minister doesn't understand that quarantine is the federal government's responsibility. It states clearly in the Constitution that the federal parliament has the power to make laws in respect of quarantine. Perhaps the federal government needs to do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to quarantine.

The minister also stated that the government would focus on and allow people from ASEAN countries to come and work on Australian farms. Look at the vaccination rates of these countries, another issue that this government hasn't dealt with. Vietnam has fully vaccinated two per cent of their population; Thailand, 7.5 per cent; Indonesia, 10.5 per cent; and the Philippines, 11.6 per cent. So not only do we have a problem with having quarantine space for these foreign nationals who work here; we also have a vaccination problem, with the people in these countries not having access to vaccines. Why won't the government be clear about where this issue has come from and the deal that was done?

The UK is one of the first countries to say to Australia: 'How our nationals are being treated in your country, how our backpackers are being treated in Australia, on Australian farms, has to end. We do not want our young people being exploited on your farms, so that rule about 60 days working on a farm to get the extension in the backpacker visa has to go.' Because of the free trade agreement, a deal was done, and that's where this visa has come from. But that hasn't dealt with the underlying issue of exploitation on our farms that is not being dealt with.

Review after review by this government, by this parliament, by universities and by the sector has demonstrated that there is widespread systemic exploitation of farmworkers in our country, yet we don't have a solution for those issues. What we have is a half-baked promise of an agricultural visa, which is supposed to be the Holy Grail to solve all agricultural workforce issues that we have. The government is not being serious here with Australian farmers and the Australian people. It is not fair. It's time that the government got real and implemented the reports it already has on the table as opposed to writing more fairytales with visas like—

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