June 2021

News

Agriculture Visa on the Table for 2021

Australia’s Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management David Littleproud, has announced an agriculture visa will become available in 2021.  The new visa is a result of Australia’s trade discussions with the UK in which it was agreed that British backpackers would no longer be required to work on Australian farms to retain their visas.  The arrangement will release British tourists from often undesired requirement, and provide an opportunity for other travellers to visit Australia.

Who can get the Agriculture visa?

In the initial stages, the agriculture visa will be rolled out to residents of countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The current member nations of ASEAN are:

  • Brunei
  • Cambodia
  • Indonesia
  • Laos
  • Malaysia
  • Myanmar
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • Thailand
  • Vietnam

When will the Agriculture visa be available?

Michael McCormack, leader of the National Party and Acting Prime Minister while Scott Morrison was in Cornwall for the G7 Summit, promised the new visa would be available by September 2021.  David Littleproud has said it will be in place by the end of the year at the latest, stating “it will be up and running well before Christmas”.

 

How will the Agriculture visa work?

Under the proposal, applicants will receive a visa to live in Australia for 3 years provided they:

  1. Perform agricultural work for the bulk of their time in Australia; and
  2. Return to their home nation for 3 months of every year.

The details are yet to be defined but the visa is said to differ from the Seasonal Worker Programme in that employer sponsorship will not be required.  This opens doors for more travellers and grants them the freedom to change employers once in Australia if they are not receiving adequate wages or working conditions whereas previously they may have found themselves ingratiated to their sponsor.

 

Protections for workers

It is important that all working visa holders in Australia understand their rights and how to enforce them.  In the past, some unscrupulous farmers have taken advantage of travellers, paying them lower than the minimum legal wage and in some cases even abusing them.  In Australia the minimum wage an employee can be legally paid is AUD $19.84 per hour, before tax.  Horticultural workers like fruit pickers however, are often paid a piecemeal rate per unit picked or processed (eg. $1 per bucket of apples) rather than an hourly rate.  This type of job is covered by a law called the Horticulture Award.  While such fruit picking type roles are not paid by the hour,  the law says the rate of pay must be enough that the “average competent employee” would be able to earn at least 15% more than the minimum wage.

In order to give migrant workers additional protection, the Federal Governmen has proposed new laws which would make it much harder for employers to exploit vulnerable people.  Any employer who attempts to:

  • coerce a visa holder to accept a work agreement that breaches their visa conditions; or
  • coerce a visa holder to accept a work arrangement by leading the visa holder to believe that if they do not accept, they will be breaching their visa conditions,

may be fined up to AU $399,600 and/or receive a sentence of up to 2 years’ imprisonment.

Anyone who is not receiving an adequate wage for the work they are doing, or is living in poor or dangerous conditions can get free advice and help from the Fair Work Ombudsman.  A worker cannot get in trouble or have their visa cancelled for contacting the Fair Work Ombudsman – this is called the Assurance Protocol and it is in place to ensure visa holders can get help when they need it without fear of punishment or deportation.  

 

What work would I be doing?

There over a hundred types of farm jobs for agricultural visitors.  Most of these positions are picking, packing and processing of fruits such as blueberries, mangoes and citrus.  Opportunities depending on your skills and experience could include:

  • Dairy farming;
  • Cotton harvesting;
  • Vegetable picking;
  • Livestock care;
  • Medicinal marijuana farming;
  • Solar farming; and
  • Grain harvesting.

 

Getting here

Of course the big question is, once a visa is granted how will tourists come to Australia?  With caps on incoming international flights still limiting arrivals, getting a plane ticket may be the biggest hurdle.  What priority agricultural workers will be given in relation to other visa holders, such as students, is not yet clear.  We await further announcements from the Federal Government on how this plan will work without a negative impact on international students and family visa holders.  It may be that a vaccine passport eradicates the need for quarantine in future and flight caps can be lifted, but this remains to be seen.

 

Will it really happen?

Given the past performance of the Australian Government on the vaccination delivery schedule and the return of international students, it is only natural to be dubious about this visa coming to fruition.  National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson said she would believe it only when it actually happened.  Mr Littleproud however said he has “an undertaking from the Prime Minister… to have it up and going by the end of the year”.  Until the details are formalised we’re cautiously optimistic but one thing is for certain, as Jawaharlal Nehru the first Prime Minister of India once said: “everything can wait, but not agriculture”.

by Chris Johnston, Founder and Principal Lawyer at Work Visa Lawyers

Eifel June 18, 2021
News

Australia’s Pandemic-Hit Farms to Reach Out to Asia for Labor

Australia is looking to recruit Southeast Asian farm workers as the pandemic and a new free-trade deal with the U.K. exacerbates labor shortages in the nation’s A$66 billion ($51 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 aging local workforce.

The government has 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 were flagged by the government forecaster as a continuing “vulnerability” for the industry as the pandemic extends through 2021, with Australia unlikely to loosen its strict border controls until well into next year.

With global food price inflation already tracking higher as farm supplies tighten, any hiccup in the supply chain could hit household budgets hard. The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index, which tracks key farm products, surged last month to reach the highest level since 2012.

Much of the impact on end prices, especially in the fruit and vegetable sector which depends more heavily on manual labor, has so far been mitigated by changes to farm management.

Still, labor shortages remain and are 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 need to work in the agriculture industry to fulfill visa requirements. That could reduce the number working on Australian farms by a further 10,000 a year, Littleproud said.

U.K., Australia Seal Trade Deal in Boost for Boris Johnson

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.

Littleproud called on the states to ramp up the construction of facilities, otherwise “farmers will make that commercial decision not to plant” during the nation’s forthcoming spring.

‘Smashed By Covid-19’

“We’ve been smashed by Covid-19,” Littleproud said. The new Asean visa program “sets the parameters, creates the environment now for the agriculture industry to have confidence that they’re going to have a constant seasonal workforce into the future,” he said.

Asked whether the arriving Southeast Asian workers, many of whom may have limited English-language skills, could be exploited or underpaid, Littleproud labeled such reports as “dangerous generalizations of demonization of Australian farmers.”

A 2016 survey of working-holiday makers found 66% felt that employers took advantage of them through underpayments. The Australian Broadcasting Corp reported that year that a group of Pacific Islanders from countries including Fiji and Tonga were being paid less than A$10 a week.

“That is not the general nature of Australian farming industry,” Littleproud said. “The vast majority do the right thing.

By  and 

Eifel June 16, 2021