AGRICULTURE —
PACIFIC LABOUR SCHEME AND SEASONAL WORKER PROGRAMME
1140. Hon PETER COLLIER to
the Minister for Regional Development:
I ask this question on behalf of Hon
Dr Steve Thomas, who is on urgent parliamentary business.
I refer to the minister's
backflip on the need to import farm labour to ensure that this year's
crops can be harvested, which is more than two months after my first call for
this to occur.
(1) On what date
did the state begin discussions with the Northern Territory and federal
governments to bring new Seasonal Worker
Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme workers into the country, as per the
minister's media release?
(2) When does the
government expect to complete those discussions and reach an agreement?
(3) By what date
can producers expect to see workers under either of these schemes on their
farms in Western Australia?
(4) Does the
minister stand by her comments to the Albany Advertiser on 13 August,
reported in an article on my call to import Pacific labour, when she was quoted
as saying, ''We've had to be very clear with industry—they
cannot rely on a hope that international labour will be available this year''?
(5) What has been
the Northern Territory government's response to the minister's
suggestion that the Western Australian
government would seek to steal the workers the Northern Territory has already
imported?
Hon
ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
I thank the member for asking
questions on behalf of Hon Dr Steve Thomas. I think that we have addressed
these questions at length. Given the highly
political and egocentric nature of the question, I will give an appropriate
reply.
(1)–(5)
We reject totally, of course, the idea that
there has been a backflip. I have said, and I have been saying since
March, and I still say that we cannot just rely on the opening of borders and
the availability of international workers. That is still the case. The first
thing we had to do, our first range of endeavours, was to keep as many
backpackers and seasonal workers as we possibly could in place. That was
certainly our focus over those first few
months of the pandemic. Then we started to prepare for the harvest. How would
we do that? How would we continue to
build on our work to bring on more Western Australians who had not previously
done this sort of work, whether it was in grain harvesting or fruit picking,
and encourage and entice them in? That is what we have been doing with a series
of measures, including an advertising campaign. Today, I read that detail. There are physicists, therapists, dance instructors
and airline pilots—an array of people—who have gone into
harvester training and are now out working. We have never said that there would
be a single answer. As time has gone on, we have developed more and more
strategies.
We
started conversations with the Northern Territory government through the
Agriculture Ministers' Forums and outside those meetings. In
fact, in August this year, I wrote to Hon David Littleproud to say that we will be watching the trial to bring in seasonal
workers that would start in September, which we did. We were then able
to make an announcement that we would embrace the scheme and work—as we
had discussed with both Hon Paul Kirby and
the current minister, Hon Nicole Manison—to use the Howard Springs
facility to bring in workers. The approved employers, the labour hire
firms, that bring in these people, are more than
happy to have those workers who finish their duties in the Northern Territory
to then come over to WA. We are now looking at a new plan. We answered
these questions at length in the debate today.
Several members interjected.
The PRESIDENT: Order! Leader of the Opposition,
I will say that when members ask long, detailed questions, sometimes they might
get a long, detailed answer.
Hon Peter Collier: Thank you, Madam President, but not
War and Peace!
The PRESIDENT: You never know, Leader of the
Opposition.