Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McMahon for her question and her ongoing interest in ensuring the farmers of Australia, particularly the farmers of the Northern Territory, have got the workforce that they need to be able to harvest their crops.

We know that the Australian agricultural sector is an absolute economic powerhouse for this country. Last year alone, $66 billion was generated in our rural and regional economies through our agricultural exports. Our farmers and our exporters should be absolutely justifiably proud of the achievements that they deliver on behalf of Australia, feeding 80 million people worldwide and employing 1.6 million Australians. It is one of the absolute underlying economic drivers of the Australian economy.

But, as you would know, Senator McMahon, in many places around the country, we still have a significant reliance on an overseas workforce to support our agricultural sector. In fact, there are some places around the country where 90 per cent of the workforce comes from overseas. The pandemic, because of the reduction in the number of working holiday-makers in Australia falling quite significantly, has absolutely highlighted the challenges faced by our regional communities. That's why this government, the Morrison-Joyce government, has put in place programs to support the agricultural sector like AgAttract. Together, these sorts of programs are able to provide the agricultural sector with the workforce and skills to continue to build on its workforce to ensure the farmers of Australia have the workforce they need.

Furthermore, we also introduced the National Agricultural Workers Code in September last year to facilitate mobility in the agricultural sector so that we could make sure that we could get workers to be able to move across borders much more easily; to make sure that we were providing the workforce that the Australian farmers need to get their crops off and to make money for Australia.