Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today our government, the National-Liberal government, has announced a great event. We have introduced the agricultural workers visa—a great announcement by Minister David Littleproud and, of course, it has the approval of cabinet. This will build on an already successful Pacific island scheme. This announcement will deliver one of the government's best commitments to the agriculture industry. It will put in place a broad-ranging visa that will cover all aspects of agriculture, including the meat processing, fisheries and forestry sectors.

The government will now commence negotiations and consultations with industry to inform the detailed management, implications and implementation of the visa. The visa's regulatory framework will be in place by the end of September. The first workers will arrive once the negotiations with partner countries are completed—and there are some negotiations still to go with state governments. The visa will be applied to skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers across a broad range of agricultural industries. As I said before, it will take in meat processing, fishing and farming.

Even before COVID, there was a shortage of labour in the agricultural world. We desperately needed fruit packers, pruners, people working in packing sheds, tractor drivers, truck drivers and fork-lift operators. We need people to market the products. A lot of these products are sold overseas, and we need people to go out and sell the products. We need office managers to process the paperwork. We need wheat harvesters. Currently we have a great bumper wheat crop in Western Australia. The only problem is we haven't got enough harvester drivers to take off the wheat. This is the issue we have had and this is why as a government we had to do something about it.

The visa will provide a basis for ongoing growth in our primary industries. We want to grow agriculture to $100 billion by the year 2030. It currently sits at around $66 billion. The agricultural visa will be demand driven and, once in place, it will self-perpetuate and do its own thing. And, at the end of the day, if a person who comes to work on our farms would like to stay in Australia, there is a way for permanent residency at the end of a qualifying period. It will be open to applicants from a range of countries, and that's still to be negotiated through bilateral agreements. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will commence these discussions very soon. It could include countries like Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and, of course, the Philippines.

These visas will supplement the existing Seasonal Worker Program and Pacific labour schemes. Under these schemes, we also employ a lot of people from Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu. These programs will remain the mainstay. You might have noticed that some months ago we announced we'll bring another 12,500 workers in to support that scheme. This is a form of foreign aid: the workers come to Australia—they love the wages, of course—and they earn much more than they could back home. It's a really good scheme. The farmers love them because they can get their crops off, and the fruit doesn't fall on the ground and waste.