By Kevin McQuillan
Next month (April), a new scheme for Pacific Islanders to work in Australia’s agricultural industry comes into force, after parliamentary inquiries heard evidence that Pacific Islanders have been exploited and treated as slave labour. But comments by a Samoan official cast doubt on how much support the workers receive from their own governments.
Each year, some 20,000 workers from Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and East Timor come to Australia to work, mostly on farms picking fruit and vegetables.
But testimony to numerous parliamentary inquiries going back 10 or more years has shown that the promises of basic wages and conditions have been rarely met.
Numerous witnesses explained that it was common practice for up to two-thirds of workers’ pay to be deducted each week for expenses, including water, the cost of flights, visas, clothing, health insurance, accommodation and transport to work on farms.
According to Stewart Levitt of law firm Levitt Robinson, who is preparing a class action on behalf of Pacific workers, there has been ‘a pandemic of worker abuse’.
“There are some exceptions to the rule. Perhaps 10 or 20% of labour hire firms or employers are doing the right thing,” he told the ABC.
“But overwhelmingly, they’re being exploited, and they’re being exploited right across Australia.”
Former Treasury official, Leith van Onselen, described Australia’s horticultural industry as ‘ground zero’ for migrant wage theft, exploitation and modern slavery.
Testimony
Twenty-nine-year-old Samoan, Talipope Kalolo, told a Senate Committee in February 2022, when their group tested positive for COVID-19, the four of them were quarantined in their one-room living quarters with weekly shopping that was not nearly enough to feed the four of them.
“For the whole week we were given two toilet paper rolls, two soaps, one bottle of juice, one loaf of bread, two oranges, and four packets of saimin noodles.. for the four of us in this one small room.”
On their first week back after 10 days of quarantine, their deductions had included the two weeks they were in isolation. He said $150 had been deducted for transport – a cost that was normally $50 per person per week.
The business at the centre of Kalolo’s claim, Melbourne agri-tourism business Sunny Ridge, has denied the allegations.
And one of Australia’s largest labour hire companies, MADEC Australia, has denied allegations it paid a worker just A$70 (US$51) for a week’s work. The firm was named by Vanuatu workers in their testimonies.
Absconding
More than 50 Pacific workers ‘absconded’ from the SWP last year, in search for better pay and work conditions. Many were poached by dodgy labour hire companies luring workers away from approved employers.
Despite calls for Border Force to crack down on dodgy labour hire firms, none has been prosecuted.
Instead, Border Force last August raided the home of Christian missionaries Geoff and Jane Smith. They told the Senate the raid came after they provided housing and pastoral care to one worker, who was allegedly sacked when he was declared unfit for work because he had a mental breakdown.
Geoff Smith said a BF officer told him: “We want to get information from you that you’ve been aiding and abetting workers. You’ve been getting them work [and] you’ve been receiving money”.
No charges have been laid against the missionaries.
Instead, the federal government launched a campaign to try and prevent workers from fleeing their jobs, with a graphic poster warning workers to “be wary of people who may promise you better work, more money or a visa to live permanently in Australia”.
It also outlined the consequences of absconding, warning “your visa may be cancelled” and “you may bring shame to your family’s reputation”.
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the new scheme will better protect worker wellbeing and provide greater flexibility for staff to move to different employers.
Samoa’s Labour Minister, Leatinuu Faumuina Wayne Sooialo, says Cabinet will monitor the situation closely and could consider removing Samoa as a beneficiary country to the scheme.
Vanuatu has also launched an inquiry into its labour mobility programmes. There are 4,500 Vanuatu workers in Australia under the scheme, based on the 2019 and 2020 numbers released by the Vanuatu government.
But whether the Samoan government will support its workers in Australia has been undermined by comments by labour attaché to Australia, Aufa’i Fulisiailagitele Saleuesile, who called on Samoans not to join the United Workers Union.
“The white people, who are in these unions, there are some unions that their performance are not good on the job, there are some unions who just came to ruin, come to look for destruction, seeking the bad,” according to his comments, published in The Age. The newspaper noted his comments, made in Samoan language, have been checked and translated by two translators.
What the changes mean:
- The new scheme combines the Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme into one unit, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme (PALM).
- A new upper time limit for visas of up to four years (it was three).
- A nine-month visa stay period to all seasonal workers, including those with an initial contract for a shorter period of work.
- Seasonal workers can apply onshore for a long-term visa, where they have been identified by their employer as suitable for ongoing work.
- Workers can move between employers more easily to “better meet workforce needs and maximise their earnings”.
