AGRICULTURE —
UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS
1042. Hon CHARLES SMITH to the Minister for Agriculture and Food:
I refer to the minister calling for
an amnesty on illegal workers as reported on the ABC on 2 October 2020 in an
article entitled ''WA Agriculture Minister calls for national illegal
worker amnesty to ease farm labour shortage''.
(1) Does the minister concede that
she is rewarding criminal behaviour?
(2) Why is she prioritising illegal
workers over Western Australian citizens?
(3) Does the
minister concede that there is no such thing as a shortage of labour; there is
only a shortage of labour at the price or wages that firms are generally
willing to pay?
(4) Does the
minister concede that if farms lifted wages and provided training, the
so-called shortage of fruit pickers and other workers would vanish?
Hon
ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
(1)–(4) I thank the member for the question, and I am
interested in his concern for wages and that fair wages are paid. I think
if he really grasped this, he would understand that this is one of the reasons
we need to deal with the issue of undocumented workers. The member would have
heard our response to the last question and would be well aware of our efforts
to mobilise Western Australian labour—the websites that we have put up and the assistance package through
which we are paying accommodation and transport to encourage Western Australian
workers to take up these jobs. I must say that these are not the most well paid
jobs, but I think it is important to note that the adult casual rate is $24.36
an hour, and quite a number of jobs available have that as their federal award
wage. In horticulture, there are not necessarily very big margins. The member
would no doubt agree with me that offering $25 an hour to an experienced header
operator in the grain business is probably a bit rich, but I think this rate,
particularly given that we are kicking in
with the accommodation and travel subsidies, might start to make this a reasonable
wage. There are also piecework
incentives that sit on top of that award wage, so it is quite possible;�
indeed, many workers do earn far more
than that once they get their skill levels up. We have been trying to mobilise
as much labour as we can. We know that there are probably around 62 000
undocumented workers across this country, many of whom come from Vietnam
and Malaysia. They have been routinely used in horticulture around the country
and many of those workers are subject to a great deal of exploitation. We are
seeking to have those people help us with this harvest and will use it as an
opportunity to fix up this very real problem.