Unpopular Pacific foreign worker scheme guidelines scrapped as Albanese Government ‘heeds advice’

The Albanese Government has axed controversial guidelines for its Pacific foreign worker scheme that would have forced farmers to pay employees a minimum of 30 hours a week. Industry leaders had warned producers would boycott the scheme after the new requirement, which was set to take effect from July 1 this year, was announced last June as part of changes to the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme. Under changes quietly announced last week, employers of short-term workers will now be required to offer 120 hours of work over four weeks, rather than 30 hours each and every week. The horticulture industry has welcomed the news, with the National Farmers’ Federation saying growers will be better off. “Business confidence in horticulture is at a low ebb right now and a lot of that has got to do with a lack of certainty in our workforce options,” NFF Horticulture Council chair Jolyon Burnett said. “The improvements will be a real shot in the arm for employers in the sector and especially for those who have made significant accommodation and other capital investments to meet scheme requirements.” The scrapped guidelines would have guaranteed PALM scheme workers a minimum weekly take-home pay of $200 in what unions had labelled “a win for workers”. Due to the seasonal and variable nature of farm work, industry leaders warned it would result in fewer employers engaging with the scheme because they would have had to pay wages when there was no work to be done. Mr Burnett said the industry was “encouraged” the Albanese Government had heeded the advice of groups including the NFF and Australian Fresh Produce Alliance. He said the changes announced on May 30 would “go a long way” to ensure the scheme remained an “accessible and viable” option for farmers. “We congratulate the Government on this improvement to the PALM scheme and ask that we now take a long-term view of building a workforce for the horticulture industry that is secure, reliable and productive, with a more balanced mix of labour sources,” Mr Burnett said. “We believe the PALM scheme has an important if not central part to play in that mix, but caution against leaving ourselves overdependent on it.” Despite the improvements, he said there would still be situations where the scheme’s “inflexibility” and “attendant costs and requirements” would mean it was not commercially viable. “We’ll continue to work with Government on getting the mix right,” Mr Burnett said. The PALM scheme allows approved businesses to hire workers from nine Pacific Islands nations and Timor Leste for up to nine months in seasonal jobs, or four years in unskilled, low-skilled and semi-skilled positions. It was introduced by the Morrison Government in 2018 in a bid to plug chronic labour shortages in Australia’s $90 billion agriculture sector and later expanded to include metropolitan meat, seafood, fruit and vegetable processors.