Growcom has alerted an inquiry into the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) that any expansion of the program into other industries such as tourism will ultimately disadvantage horticulture by reducing growers’ access to a critical labour source.
On behalf of the Queensland production horticulture industry, Growcom’s Commercial Services Manager Donna Mogg last month presented to the public hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s inquiry into the SWP.
In May, the Federal Government began an inquiry into the SWP which gives workers from Nauru, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu, the opportunity to work in agriculture in Australia in order to earn an income and subsequently be able to address poverty in their own homelands.
The inquiry is investigating the program’s role in horticulture and specifically:
· the role of seasonal workers in growing the horticulture industry
· the expansion of the SWP to other countries and sectors
· labour recruitment issues and the impact on Australian jobs
· increasing access for overseas women and youth workers
· how the SWP supports development in the Pacific, and
· the visa regime for seasonal workers, labour regulation and compliance issues.
In our presentation to the inquiry, Growcom pointed out that the SWP provides a vital workforce for Queensland’s production horticulture growers.
The particular advantage of SWP is that it is designed to bring people who primarily come to work. This compares with visa schemes such as the Working Holidaymaker where the workers come primarily to holiday.
The other advantage is the returning nature of the SWP workers. Over a third return every year and that means there is not only continuity of people, but also of skills.
Many employers are relying on these returning workers to supervise groups of workers themselves. This skills development means that with each subsequent harvest period more skills are now immediately available and there is a trusted and reliable source of labour.
The industry is not averse to employing Australians, but the sheer number of workers required and the volatile short term nature of the work are ongoing challenges. TAFE Queensland told the enquiry that a report in 2011 had shown horticulture has a deficit of 8300 employees and that is expected to rise to 17 800 by 2018.
As a result of this difficulty, horticulture has come to rely on working holiday makers known as backpackers to supplement the workforce during harvest. But those workers are not always as productive as the seasonal workers who are not in Australia to holiday.
This productivity could be the key to equipping the sector to take up new export opportunities offered by the signing of free trade deals with countries like China, Japan and Korea.
To supply these markets we must increase production and that means we must future-proof our workforce to accommodate for larger harvests. Workforce planning must go hand in hand with plans to expand production levels needed to access, and reliably supply, these new market opportunities.
We urge the Federal Government to retain the economic aid aspect of the program in considering which additional countries should be included in the scheme.
Growcom’s presentation to the inquiry can be read in Hansard for 13 November 2015: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/search.w3p
