AGRICULTURE — PACIFIC LABOUR SCHEME AND
SEASONAL WORKER PROGRAMME
806. Mr R.S. LOVE to the Premier:
I refer to the belated
announcement by the Premier's Minister for Agriculture and Food today
regarding Pacific Labour Scheme and Seasonal Worker Programme workers
coming to Western Australia. Why will the Premier not sign Western Australia up
to the National Agricultural Workers Code to further reduce the worker shortage
crisis afflicting our agriculture sector?
Mr M. McGOWAN
replied:
I am pleased to say that over the course of the last months
we have worked to come up with an arrangement that we hope will assist our agricultural industries in Western Australia to
secure more labour, particularly over the harvest season. As we know, unless some of the ordinary
workforce, which often comprises seasonal workers or backpackers, already present within Western Australia steps up,
we cannot secure any more for the state because of the international
border closures. That is a problem that was not of our making; that was a problem
that was a nationally agreed measure to protect the country from COVID-19.
Over the course of,
perhaps, the last four or five months, we worked on options to try to get more
people, in particular Western Australians, out in the field. We launched
the Work and Wander Out Yonder campaign. We launched the allowances, which were
up to $4 000 a person who goes to work in seasonal agriculture going from the
city to the country, plus connection between farmers or employers and potential
employees through various employment websites. On top of that, we have now
worked out arrangements to allow people who are prepared to quarantine to cross
borders and work in agriculture on a seasonal basis. This is an announcement
that the agriculture minister made today that I support; we worked
cooperatively to reach this arrangement.
We, obviously, wanted to
wait until the federal budget was delivered to see whether the commonwealth
government was going to do anything significant to assist with this
problem. We were hoping for something more from the federal government. Unfortunately, it did not come up with a great deal
to get more people into the sort of work, so, obviously, we have come up
with this arrangement today, which we hope improves the situation for farmers
and regional communities—and, indeed, for farmers within the
metropolitan boundary. We are hopeful that this will make a difference. It will not fill the entire gap because we cannot
bring people in from Germany or Sweden or Britain or Japan or wherever
the backpackers ordinarily come from; that is a fact. That is outside our
control, but we hope that this will make a significant difference.