I suspect that state governments are heavily underwriting Pacific worker schemes with those costs hidden from the public. I doubt there is enough profit in fruit picking to charter long distance aircraft and rent quarantine accommodation for a fortnight. In some cases hire air conditioned coaches to take workers from the accommodation to the farm.

Perhaps the horticulturists donate thousands to political parties and get millions back in return. Politicians who champion the free market seem to have no qualms about spending taxpayers money to 'prove' how well the system works.

With 10.5% youth unemployment, there us no reason to import workers. Get lazy, spoilt Australian brats to work. No work, no money.

taswegian: "Politicians who champion the free market seem to have no qualms about spending taxpayers money to 'prove' how well the system works."

But farm labour wages are NOT an example of the free market. Under the free market while it is true that there is no minimum wage, it also true that there is no maximum wage. Farmers tend to think that the minimum wage is also a maximum wage. But in a true free market the price of labour is set by the supply meeting demand. If the demand is higher than supply (like it already was before the pandemic- hence the reason for the working holiday visas schemes which the pandemic routed) then the wage that a farmer pays should be increased to make the job or attractive to workers so that supply of labour increases.
What farmers really mean when they say there is a shortage of labour is that there is a shortage of labour at the rate they want to pay.
But to this idea of paying more (a strange and foreign idea to many farmers) a whingeing farmer will say that they will not be able to make a profit and they will go broke. But under a free market system then this exactly what is meant to happen! The inefficient farmers will go broke and their assets can then either a) be bought by the efficient farmers who can make a profit in a free market, or b) the assets will be purchased by some smart business minded person who will re-purpose them to different type business where they can make a profit.

-- continued below --

-- from above --

If you want an examples of economies based on free market principles look at the wealthy Northern European countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark. All of the these countries have NO minimum national wage (Germany did as well not so long ago). The price of labour is mainly set by the employees (usually via representation) negotiating with the employers- the government has no say in it. However, once agreements are reached the government uses it's power to enforce them. In addition they also have very few government handouts/bail-out for business, if your business can't make a profit in these countries it will go bust.

An example of a country that is very far from a free market economy is the USA.

You do miss one fact thinkabit. Under a free market there is not the tax payer paying bludgers a living wage to stay at home, sitting on their broadening ass doing nothing, rather than do the work on offer.

ttbn is right, give these bludgers an address where work is available, & a ticket to get there, & cut their dole on the spot. No work, no dole, when people are crying out for labour.

Then we would see a free market system, where lazy bums could chose the highest payer, but not chose none.

Maybe? But first, they need to endure a full fortnight of island quarantine then be allowed to stay and work the circuit for three consecutive years! minus the middleman labour-hire companies! I can see no valid reason why a farmer's workers cannot be accommodated on-farm or trucked on to the very next client by the current farmer!?

I see a time not too far ahead when many cash trapped folk will have their homes foreclosed on! And be virtually forced on to the road and towed caravans? It will be these future itinerants that could easily replace ASEAN workers and won't be as difficult given no language barrier. And could form a cohort of work for the dole and allow a higher non-taxd threshold as farm labour! This would include hope, self-esteem, a future and folk ready willing and able to report rogue employers!

Getting the paper shuffling profit demanding middleman out of the economy would halve the cost of living and doing business in this country! And it beggars belief, why our governments still tolerate it? Or that that occurs because too many of the aforementioned, have skin in the game!?
Alan B.

Hasbeen. Agree with your comment and if they continue to refuse? Conscript them, remove their phones quarantine their cars and hold their dole payments until they are on-farm and getting used to a full day of earning their keep! It'd be character building!

Let them wail, cry and beg for Mummy!? But ensure that Mummy doesn't rescue them without a penalty, say like forfeiture of the family home!?

Bet your bottom dollar something along those lines would keep Mummy out of the picture until her spoiled rotten brats grew up and she grew a spine?
Alan B.

Effectively, fruit picking is a rip off of epic proportions: And then comes the National party, the farmers strong arm for extracting undeserved profits.

There are a couple of posters above who actually know what they are talking about on this subject, again it’s Taswegian and thinkabit,
And add myself to this mix, since I’ve spent time talking the talk and walking the walk.

Walk through a farm gate and you become the peasant the farmer will expend huge energy in reducing to slave status.

Politicians, with the visa innovation mentioned here, are lazily getting on board with the vote buying strategy which has no benefits to resident Australians at all, and simply copies the US ethic of supplying “cheap” labour, not necessary market valued labour.

And as for those lazy unemployed (sic). I remind you that the unemployed are inevitably unresourced, and on the most part incapable of moving from one desperate situation and into another in the middle of a paddock. (The unemployed are not in the same boat as recreational back packers on holidays).

Much past Government research on farm labour shortages, invariably ends up pointing the finger of scorn at the farming sector itself, as the main contributor to the supposed emergency.

It’s a fake.

Dan

AlanB: "Conscript them, remove their phones quarantine their cars ..."
Kudos to you Alan, you've just created government sanctioned slavery. Well done! /sarc

>rural Australia’s most pressing problem is a chronic shortage of labour.

No. its an unwillingness to pay enogugh salary to attract the labour for what is essentially a sh!tty job. Pay them $150K a year and you won't have a problem, you'll also ensure massive productivity gains because of expensive labour, as capital replaces labour.

We're supposed to live under a quasi capitalist system, where the business owners pay the going rate to attract the labour they need, with a floor being set by government to limit exploitation. Now the tables have turned and labour has the upper hand, capitalists want to import "slaves".

EDIT: Why is slaves flagged as a profanity ?

There has even been a suggestion of granting citizenship to foreign fruit pickers. How daft is that! They get citizenship, then head off to Sydney or Melbourne for better jobs or a life on the dole. No more fruit picking for them. Next year, more fruit pickers have to brought in, and it all starts again.

And before anyone talks about 'strict conditions', remember the government is too soft to make the lazy buggers already here get out to the bush and work.

Yep to some degree Ttbn unemployed should have a go at it (bush work).
The breakdown on statistics of farm workers shows that there is a myth and no truth to that myth, that back packers are the back bone of rural workers.
Over 90% of Australian farm workers are local Australian citizens. A paltry 9% are back packers.
The missing back packers component I assume, will be the gap Asians will fill.

If as this article states, the job vacancies for rural workers is 200k, then that number of Asian visa holder farm workers will constitute our total pa immigration.

Also, it’s another myth to say farm work is unskilled. Mostly it requires multiple skills which include willingness to work adjustable hours on long shifts in all weathers, with skills to operate machinery, drive trucks, maintain stationary motors, stock skills, fencing skills, building skills, you name it, and all of that and more on very low wages with minimum services IE accommodation. (Accommodation supplied is a rarity).

If accomodation is supplied it’s invariably not free. When it rains on black mud, you can be stuck there for weeks. Your money soon runs out, but the expectation of rent continues. No mercy.

Take it from me, it’s not a place for uneducated idiots, there will be no mercy shown.
Asians and farm work don’t mix, I’ve seen it first hand. And of course, we can now expect equality expectations to include 50% Asian women.
We already have European back packers crying rape all over the Australian back blocks, imagine where this bright idea will lead!
The local boys will spread their genes a bit wider now, that may be a positive.

But here is an Acoss breakdown on all the lazy unemployed your highlighting.
Educate yourself as to who they really are.

http://www.acoss.org.au/faces-of-unemployment-2020/

Dan

diver,
> Asians and farm work don’t mix, I’ve seen it first hand

Please explain!
Who does the farm work in Asia?

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ttbn,
> They get citizenship, then head off to Sydney or Melbourne for better jobs or a life on the dole

With Sydney and Melbourne house prices this high? If anyone else had said that then I'd have assumed they were joking!

Aidan.

I take it from your post above, you are onside with opening the (flood) gates to cheap Asian labour, freely offered to the farming sector to plunder for profit?

A position which implies (by your less than subtle defence of it), your happy to have Asians plundered in that way.

If your so enamoured with Asian peasants, wouldn’t your stand here be one of protecting their rights at home first, rather than having them dumped at a farm gate in Australia, under the pretence of lifting them up, in order to hold down wages of the 90% of Australian workers already scorched by the greed of the landed classes, and their enabling National Party, who, coincidentally, has their arch criminal back in control, Barnaby Joyce.

This scheme is beyond a joke, and totally dishonest!

As I said, it’s a fake!

Dan

When Aidan comes up with an opinion of his own rather than nagging other posters over their opinions, Hell will freeze over. He is a parasite.

Dan, spent many hours picking fruit and with bent back harvesting all manner of food! And was there running beside the truck when we were harvesting lucerne hay, in a predawn to twilight gut bust!

And travelled all over towing a caravan to access it!

No, I don't endorse slavery! As when I did this work myself, earned a decent quid!

And as a rule, those of us who grew up in rural areas, could work the pants off of soft spoiled (moaning whining sobbing) kids from the towns. And if they weren't so soft and spoiled, we would not have to import labour! Nor use shonky labour-hire to recruit and deploy them!

I get that some don't agree with conscription! Or withholding phones and cars until the character building and teamwork training had rusted on!

Simply put, hard work never ever hurt anyone, just its lack!

Older generations did this character-building work, even while still at school! Or during the gap year, they needed and time to decide, what comes next? The saved income didn't hurt either!

Slavery is unpaid work and none of what I did or propose is anything like that!

All I'm saying or proposing is, an honest day's toil, for an honest day's pay! And as hasbeen has said, get the lard asses up off of their broad beams and out where they can regain their health and genuine self-esteem!

We confront a future where the soft self-indulgent will be unable to adapt to the change that's coming! Whereas, those who are able to tie it up with wire etc, to keep the show on the road, will make it on through to the other side with something to show for their hard yakka and sacrifice!

And we do need to expose a cohort of farmers who cheat and steal wages and entitlements, that then rip earned profit margins from the majority that do the right thing. The current status quo won't change any of that! But filling the field with English speaking Aussies will!
Alan B.

Fruit picking, been there, done that. In the 50s when parents still couldn't afford things like sports gear & boots for kids, most of us went fruit picking to earn the money to buy them for ourselves.

When the basic wage was less than 10 quid a week as a 14 year old I could earn 15 quid in 5 days work, not much wrong with that. It paid for my bike, foot ball boots, & even a watch back when they cost a couple of weeks average wage.

The schools used to push dire threats about not marking our exams, or not letting us back next year if we went fruit picking straight after the exams, but all that easy money was too strong a drag, when families were still getting over the poor years of the war.

Come on Diver, have an honest look at farming, particularly fruit & veg. Cop the cost of planting/pruning, fertalising, watering, picking packaging, & freight to the markets, then find out if the price today covers those costs, & perhaps a profit.

An organic grower mate of mine gave up & bought a truck when for 4 consecutive months the price he got for quality products was less than the cost of cartons & freight.

A tomato grower in Bundaberg told me he got less than the cost of production & freight for on average 6 months a year. In most years he got a slight profit for another 4 months, then there would be a shortage for a couple of months, offering sky high prices when he made all his annual profit. His problem is no one knows when the shortage will occur. He has to maintain full 12 month production to catch the high price period.

Growing food is a mugs game, that's why, when I needed to maintain an income after I retired I grew advanced shrubs & day lilies for the landscape trade. Meeting demand was the problem, not selling the production for a profit, like the market gardeners down the road.

Will we continue to grow our own food, or outsource it to foreign countries as we have done with manufacturing? Anything is possible with the current Australian political class, more interested in control than in what is best for Australia and Australians.

PS: they have already outsourced agricultural labour because they are frightened of making Australians work for their money/dole. Bludgers' votes are of the same value as hard workers' votes are.

There was a time when fruit picking was a well paid job. Farmers are now too used to having exploitable visa holders. They don't want Australians who know their rights.

There was also a time when many people would live part of the year on the dole and take seasonal or casual work at other times. Centrelink has set up disincentives against this. Unemployed people who are considering harvest work need to be assured that they can go straight back on the dole when the harvest is over.

diver,
I'm not happy to have anyone plundered - pay rates must comply with the relevant award and I would expect that to be enforced. However I don't share the xenophobic views that seem to be prevalent here. I am happy for Asian immigrants to come and do the work, and hope this policy will also be extended to refugees.

Your false dichotomy is irrelevant. There is, unfortunately, very little Australia can do to protect the rights of Asians in Asia. But I don't think there's much of a moral case for preventing them coming here and dong the sort of work Australians don't want to do. And I certainly don't approve of trying to force unemployed Australians into undesirable jobs instead of jobs more suited to their skillsets and preferences.

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ttbn,
I've got plenty of opinions of my own, and am willing to give you my opinion on any topic you'd care to nominate. But you have a track record of not wanting to read them!

Aidan,

You say that you have ideas of your own, but you obviously don't think they will stand up to scrutiny, so you attack the views of others. Not once have you posted without criticising another poster. Your 'track record' is that of a miserable grinch and social misfit, with nothing to say that doesn't involve intolerance of people's right to say what they want think without your childish carping.

ttbn,
Criticising the views of others is a normal art of most internet discussion groups, and probably all the political ones! My doing so tells you nothing about whether my views stand up to scrutiny. You're free to respond to whatever I say to test whether they do, but instead you resort to whinging because you seem to want your own comments to be exempt from scrutiny even when they're ridiculously illogical!

Aidan.

You have little to no knowledge on this subject, to me that’s obvious.

You are very welcome to remain ignorant, your choice; as ignorance can serve as a buffer to the pain which comes with facing off to the forces of evil which are aligned at us all; in this case Barnaby Joyce and the Liberal Government, under a professing Christian leader with scant evidence to show for it, and mimicking the malediction of lies and half truths, which aligns pretty closely to the morality of the good Sheriff of Nottingham, they sell Australians a “pup” .

However, if you begin to communicate on this subject sensibly, then I will be happy to engage with you.

And hot off the press at SBS, where the only thing of relevance to them is the immigrant, we have this:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/new-report-warns-some-migrant-workers-paid-less-than-2-an-hour-on-australian-farms

Not looking good for the immigrant apparently, right from the get go. The missing bit of information with this news release is, the farming sector have been scorching all and sundry since time immemorial.
Only when it happens to migrants does the fact of it seem matter!

Dan

diver,
I used to have a lot of respect for Barnaby Joyce in the Howard era, but that's long gone - now he's one of the worst politicians in Canberra. However I prefer to judge political issues on their merits rather than on who supports them!

Underpayment is a serious issue, but we have a legal system to deal with that and it can be strengthened i need be. I don't think we should punish all farmers for the possibility that a few of them might underpay their workers.