SOUTH PACIFIC: Cherry Picking Labour

By Stephen de Tarczynski Reprint | | Print |

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Sep 15 2008 (IPS) - Doubts remain over the “development” potential – promoted by the government and farmers – of a recently-announced scheme which will see Pacific islanders handed temporary working visas to pick Australian fruit.

Foreign minister Stephen Smith says that the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme is a demonstration of Australia’s partnership with its neighbours in the region. “The Pacific focus reflects Australia’s special historical links with Pacific Island countries and the government’s commitment to assist them to address their unique, and in some cases significant, development needs,” he says.

“The remittances sent home will significantly help the development of their villages and communities,” he adds.

Announced in August, the three-year pilot scheme will see some 2,500 temporary visas made available to workers from Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

The workers – whose visas will allow them to work in Australia for up to seven months in any 12-month period – will be employed in the horticultural industry where they will assist in harvesting the nation’s fruit and vegetables.

The industry has been lobbying government for the past five years to host foreign workers in order to overcome the labour shortage. It says that 22,000 extra workers are needed and that up to 700 million Australian dollars (554 million US dollars) worth of fresh produce is left to rot due to the current lack of manpower.

President of the National Famers Federation (NFF), David Crombie, praised the scheme, saying that it “is founded on mutual benefits for farmers and employees.”

Crombie argues that while the farmers receive assistance to pick their crops, the remuneration – which he says will “provide a boost for them, their families and their local economies” – and acquired skills will be of great benefit to the islanders.

“While they will take home a significant amount of money, even more importantly, the experience they gain from working alongside the world’s best fruit and vegetable producers is a vital stepping stone toward ongoing development in Pacific Island countries,” he says.

But while the NFF, Smith and others in the Rudd government talk up the ‘development’ potential of providing seasonal work to, at least initially, a small number of workers from island nations – agriculture minister Tony Burke says that the pilot scheme “could also meet the development needs of our Pacific island neighbours – dissenting views are also being expressed.

Gaurav Sodhi, a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) thinktank, says that “if the scheme is designed as a development scheme, then I’m afraid it fails completely.”

Sodhi co-authored an analysis with his CIS colleague Helen Hughes – ‘The Bipolar Pacific’, released in August – on the troubles facing Pacific Island nations. They concluded that Pacific Islands fall into one of two categories – the first, whereby modest economic growth has provided citizens with reasonable levels of education and health, and a second group in which economies “have stagnated at best”, where people struggle without electricity or running water and where there is a lack of law and order.

About 80 percent of the Pacific’s population live in countries in the second group, say Sodhi and Hughes.

The authors placed two nations which will be involved in Australia’s temporary worker scheme, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, in the latter group, while Tonga was put in the former.

Sodhi and Hughes argue that the principal causes of political instability and civil strife in the region are the unemployment and underemployment of some four million people. “Two million of those are men who don’t have a lot to do at all and who are responsible for growing social and civil unrest,” says Sodhi.

He told IPS that the 2,500 temporary working visas to be offered by Australia will not provide the Pacific with the resources it needs for development. “That is in no way making any difference to the labour market in the Pacific,” he says.

“As it stands now, you’d need to bring in over one million people to have any development impact at all,” says Sodhi.

Although he expects that individual workers will benefit from labouring in Australia – the government says that strict enforcement of Australian workplace standards will be applied to ensure that seasonal workers are not exploited – Sodhi argues that greater benefit would be derived if the workers were allowed to migrate to Australia permanently.

“The best benefits that come from migration come from permanent migration and short-term migration is just a dilution of those benefits,” he told IPS.

A report released in May by Swinburne University’s Institute for Social Research focused on a similar scheme being run in New Zealand – the Recognised Seasonal Worker program began in April 2007 and allows foreign nationals from Pacific Island and southeast Asian nations to undertake temporary employment in the country’s horticultural and viticultural industries – and found that there were “clear financial benefits for Pacific villagers.”

But besides also finding that disputes had occurred in New Zealand between workers and farmers – over issues such as housing, “down time” (when the work had expired but workers were still paying for housing and food costs), pay and deductions – the report’s author, Nic Maclellan, said that “the significant social costs of temporary migration for work” should not overshadow remittances.

Maclellan reported that long stints away may not be in the best interests of a worker’s family.

“Seasonal workers are separated from family for extended periods of time, which can impact on children’s welfare and education and put an extra burden on the elderly left in the village,” wrote Maclellan.

Sodhi opines that “the real costs come from longer-term effects.” The CIS analyst says that when guest worker schemes have been tried elsewhere “it’s turned out to be a long-term disaster.”

He argues that it creates a two-tiered society – “one tier for permanent citizens and another tier for temporary migrants.”

“There is something fundamentally ugly about inviting poorer neighbours into your country so they can pick your fruit, and only so they can pick your fruit,” says Sodhi.