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