Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The new agriculture visa builds on a number of other measures our government has delivered. In September last year we restarted Pacific labour mobility programs. Since the restart over 10,000 workers have arrived from the Pacific and Timor-Leste. These Pacific workers have been invaluable to our agriculture sector and will continue to be the mainstay of our overseas agricultural workforce well into the future.

We'll also be doubling the number of Pacific workers in Australia, with an extra 12½ thousand people to be recruited by March 2022. We have committed $29.8 million to fund initiatives to improve employment opportunities in the ag sector, including attracting domestic workforce, ensuring we've got incentives to help people—in particular, young people—move to the regions, and it's great to see that over 3,000 people have done that. We've also designed and delivered the Agricultural Workers Code so that workers can cross state borders and get the crops off in time during COVID.