I think you can all be confident that the principal reason why orchards are interested in engaging Pacific-islanders in fruitpicking labour is that, for one reason or another, it is cheaper to do that, despite the obstacles described in the article.

So let's get to the bottom of that issue first.

In the meantime, is there some reason why we can't develop policies that enhance employment prospects for people in Australia and our neighbours in the Pacific? My own travels int he Pacific (and I admit that this comment is based on my anecdotal experience only) indicates that labour in Australia and New Zealand provides vital income to these nations (and, correlatively, ensures their stability, which is in turn important for our security).

As for the suggestion that we should never import labour into Australia that is ridiculous. It's been happening since 1788 and we haven't done too badly out of it!

I think it is a great idea. Somehow I cannot come to grips with importing workers.

I take it that these jobs are available now or very soon. So lets get cracking to fill them. The Beattie Government need contacting. Noel Pearson had some people down to Victoria picking fruit awhile back. How do I get in touch with Noel? What about the Feds and NT governments?

Rainier and others of aboriginal decent, what about any contacts you have to spread the word.

$1000 per week is far better than the dole. It may just give some the bit of capital they need to start something else.

Paying decent wages and providing decent working conditions to unemployed Aboriginal and other Australians to pick fruit would make very little difference to the cost of that fruit. A recent article in the Seattle times worked out that only about 6% of the cost of apples (one of the most labour intensive crops grown in the US) went to the farmer, and about a third of that to the illegal immigrant farm workers. Their wages could be doubled or even tripled and all the costs passed on without the consumer even noticing it. Even if the Pacific Islanders would work more cheaply, we are still stuck with paying welfare benefits to the local unemployed and paying for all the health problems and social pathology that go with long term unemployment.

The real obstacle here might be tax and welfare policies that claw back so much of the gains from any effort that it ceases to be worthwhile. Because of all the benefits from work to both the individual and the community it is very shortsighted not to address this.

Divergence,
Yes I agree. There needs to be incentives for people to do this type of work.

Years ago people in say Melbourne would take their holidays at fruit picking time and they and wives would go fruit picking. All cash in hand and Vic Rail even had special trains running to the fruit growing areas. Many a house or house block was paid off that way, with hard work. Sydney blokes that wanted extra money could go to the markets and pick up a few hours work each day before starting their regular job.

Keating buggered that when he said everyone had to have a tax file number to get a job. A few inspectors were sent to the fruit areas and the cockies were then too scared to put anyone on, for cash.
People then decided it was not worth the effort and stopped fruit picking.

I reckon that people that work that hard, like picking fruit in 150 degrees and say shearing should not have to pay any tax. The money is mostly back in the economy next week anyway. It is a way for those with nothing but a willingness to work can get on top. I say good on them.

If the Government was smart they wou;ld give incentive to do hard work.

GW,

Pearson has never provided clear evidence that welfare created dependency.

In my opinion he deliberately avoids any analysis or reference to historical and intergenerational causes to contemporary Aboriginal poverty - thus providing luddites like Leigh with a simplistic approach to 'knowing' what is wrong 'with aborigines' - no research is required, just and armchair ‘expert’ opinion. Its all so easy isn't it!

For your benefit I have found his [Pearson’s} analysis to be totally ahistorical – surprising this when you consider his formal studies at the university of Sydney was in the area of Aboriginal history.

His mono-causal connection between the introduction of the welfare system and increasing social dysfunction ignores the impact of a whole range of factors since colonisation began.

As a hypothetical experiment lets pick any non-Indigenous community somewhere in Australia and via government and legislation lets

-take their land from them
-steal children we feel need to 'civilised'
-pay them half of no wages for the next 50 years, confiscate child endowment and other social security benefits
-lease their labour out to the pastoral or mining industry at no cost
-control and regulate their movements through govt and police laws of control

And then lets revisit them in 80 years and ask why they haven’t engaged in the real economy - write neo-con theory that absolves the need for any deeper inquiry.

Leigh knows nothing about the realities of Aboriginal people and I sense you know about as much.

Are you entitled to an opinion? Of course you are.

Is this opinion based on any longitudinal engagement with Indigenous people, communities, and issues? Absolutely not.

But you still want me to indulge this ignorance as if this does not matter. It does matter and I suggest you take some responsibility and deal with it.

As with Leigh , I sense that you care more about retaining and protecting your redneck ideas and myths about Aboriginal people than caring of the plight of Aboriginal people themselves. The funny thing is that you think this insincerity is not obvious. Guess what, it sticks out like dogs b%^lls

Not everyone lost their land,

Not everyone lost their traditional hunting activities,

Not everyone lost their culture,

yet life experiences are often so similar.

A late friend would say, we became prisoners of flour, sugar and tea... coming into a life that looked easier, at costs not understood at the time, but faced with these choices again with the knowledge of now, would we choose to go back and remain there NO WAY !

Life is easier, life is better, we just have to learn how to enjoy it more.

All around the world has been a multi-generational leap from hunter gathering to cultivation, to whatever we are up to now.

Not everyone progresses at the same pace.

A great deal of the injury over the past 20years has been self inflicted, there has been denial of relationship between personal choice and failure to progress, failure to achieve.

IF you live in communities you would see, and perhaps understand, how family and relationships which in past eras of little intergenerational change were strength have dragged back, punished people who set off to improve things for themselves and their immediate families by accumulating property - be it clothes, cd players, cars, houses...

The complaints about punising effects of high tax rates is the closest explanation i can think of you might understand.

Should my left arm blame my right arm for where i do not succeed, or should I learn to do things bette