Australia is looking to recruit Southeast Asian farm workers as the pandemic and a new free-trade deal with the UK exacerbates labor shortages in the nation’s $66 billion-a-year agriculture industry.
The government aims to offer three-year working visas by the end of the year to citizens from the 10 Asean countries, which include Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, Agriculture Minister David Littleproud told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday. Australia already has a similar arrangement in place with Pacific Island nations.
With Australians reluctant to pick up what is often considered to be strenuous manual labor, reliance on foreigners has long been a crux to an industry that has seen a shrinking and ageing local workforce.
The government had previously attempted to attract backpackers - who must already complete at least three months of agricultural work for a typical two-year working-holiday stay - with the offer of a visa extension on the completion of a longer farm stint.
Still, their number has plunged from 160,000 pre-pandemic to less than 40,000 as the nation’s borders were closed to almost all non-residents, leaving some goods not sown or left to rot unpicked.
Labor shortages are also set to get worse under Australia’s new free trade agreement that Prime Minister Scott Morrison inked in London on Tuesday with counterpart Boris Johnson.
Under the deal, backpackers from the U.K. will no longer be required to work in the agriculture industry to fulfil visa requirements. That’s expected to reduce the number working on Australian farms by a further 10,000 a year, Littleproud said.
Meanwhile, a lack of dedicated quarantine facilities has meant only 7,000 workers from the 10 Pacific nations are currently in Australia, even though that visa program allows for 25,000 arrivals.
Asked whether the arriving Southeast Asian workers, many of whom may have limited English-language skills, could be exploited or underpaid, Littleproud labelled such reports as “dangerous generalisations of demonisation of Australian farmers.”
A 2016 survey of working-holiday makers found 66 per cent felt that employers took advantage of them through underpayments.
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