Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) | Hansard source

I am happy to rise today to speak on behalf of the primary producers in my electorate and to call out these poorly considered changes to the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme. These changes have been forced through by this government without consultation with the very Australians the scheme was originally designed to help. I have spoken to those Australians in my electorate, and they are telling me exactly that.

The PALM scheme was devised with a specific purpose by the coalition in 2021. It was introduced as a direct response to farmers' bumper crops literally being left to rot on the vine or in the fields due to a lack of labour to harvest them. Not only was it affecting those farmers and their livelihoods, but also every Australian was being forced to pay more at the checkout due to supply chain bottlenecks.

At the time of its introduction, employers were able to hire Pacific and Timor-Leste workers in unskilled, low-skilled and semiskilled positions for seasonal work of up to nine months, or longer—in certain roles, for up to four years. The scheme recognised that work that involves crops is seasonal, and its parameters were designed and devised to accommodate that. There were checks and balances included, to ensure that the employers were officially approved in order to recruit under the PALM scheme and to provide protection for workers from potential exploitation.

I do accept that there was a handful of incidents where workers were exploited. And nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to see people living in cramped conditions. But the protections were there. It doesn't matter what industry you are in; there are always going to be unscrupulous people. That is why we need the appropriate checks and balances, to ensure that those protections are there.

But these changes are, in fact, pushing people away from the PALM scheme, and that's going to have a negative effect on those who rely so heavily on those workers coming to Australia to work in these industries—on farmers like the blueberry, avocado and banana producers in my own electorate of Cowper. Its popularity was illustrated by the nearly 40,000 workers working in the country under the scheme, as recently as May this year, and the farmers that I've spoken to were extremely grateful for the old scheme, the way it was. But it just seems that the Labor government wishes to change this for change's sake and without the appropriate consultation.

The most recent budget introduced a minimum 30-hour week, each week, every week, for each worker. This simply isn't sustainable for the vast majority of seasonal producers. It also disregards the preference of many workers themselves, who were able to work longer hours over shorter periods of time, making as much money as possible in short bursts, before returning home to their families—much like our own fly in, fly out workers in other industries around the country. I know I have accused this government of being metro-centric and ignoring the regions before, in a wide range of policy. But I feel justified in repeating that sentiment in relation to these changes.

The blanket process has been made in favour of service industries like aged care. Yes, we need workers in aged care—but over and above primary production? It's not to say that aged care doesn't need that assistance, but why are we cutting off our nose to spite our face? Surely the policy could be designed to better fit the agricultural industry, which, quite often, seems to be left to last.

I urge this government to reconsider its most recent changes to what was, previously, successful coalition policy. Don't make these changes. Don't make life harder for our families. And don't prevent immigrants coming over here to pick fruit.

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