The NFF Horticulture Council has warned that today’s migration announcement does nothing to explain how changes affecting Working Holiday Makers serve the Government’s stated objective of easing housing pressure, while leaving regional employers exposed to unknown workforce risk.
Executive Officer Richard Shannon said the Government had framed its migration package as necessary to help the housing market catch up.
“Nothing in the changes to specified work or Working Holiday Maker settings does anything to build a single house,” Mr Shannon said.
“Backpackers doing harvest work in regional Australia are not the cause of housing shortages in our capital cities. They are the reason fruit gets picked, packed and onto supermarket shelves.”
Mr Shannon said the deeper problem was that government was intervening in a demand-driven system without the evidence to understand what it was changing.
“Every inquiry, review and report into agricultural labour over the last 30 years has found the same thing. We do not have adequate data or insight into how regional labour markets actually work.
“On that foundation, the Government now proposes to control numbers, impose caps and run ballots. It cannot say with any confidence what the perverse consequences will be, because it does not have the evidence base to know.”
For many employers, he said, the Working Holiday Maker program is the only accessible workforce solution government provides to address a persistent and well-documented labour market failure.
“Change the incentives to work in agriculture and you change who turns up, where they go and whether they come at all. That risk is being carried entirely by growers.
“Leave Australian farmers short of labour and there must, as we witnessed through COVID, be upward pressure on food prices.”
The Council is calling for the existing visa backlog to be cleared immediately, ahead of harvest.
“Growers are making decisions right now that depend on workers still waiting on a visa outcome. Every week of delay compounds the cost.”
Mr Shannon acknowledged constructive elements in the announcement, including the addition of agriculture, fisheries and forestry to priority processing and greater certainty on timeframes.
“Those are steps forward. But they do not answer the central question industry is asking.”
The Council joins calls from across the economy for an urgent briefing from government on the modelling and assumptions underpinning these changes.
ENDS
About the Horticulture Council
The Council is the recognised peak body for forming policy and advocating on behalf of the national horticulture industry. Established in 2017, it now comprises 19 national commodity and state-based horticulture bodies.
It is a member of the National Farmers’ Federation, free to establish and advance its own policy positions and responses issues impacting the horticulture industry.
For more information about the Council click here.