Australian ASEAN Agriculture Workers Scheme needs urgent adjustment to ease labour shortages

Labour shortages in rural Australia are so chronic, that both agreements can co-exist. The new Labor Minister for Agriculture Murray Watt and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong need to remove clause 403.218.3 from the regulation requiring anyone applying to be a citizen of a participating country, to allow the flow of workers from all ASEAN states to apply for job positions on Australian farms and assist in alleviating the current labour shortages.

The advantage of removing clause 403.218.3 will also remove any unnecessary procedures within supply countries that could promote schemes that extort money from potential applicants, which is widespread throughout the region. This financial exploitation of foreign workers may leave many debt-ridden for many years, paying back their loans or "application" fees long after they are working in their host countries. Clause 403.218.3 promoted these types of practices.

The removal of clause 403.218.3 should eliminate an unnecessary layer in the application process. This will make it easier for both potential employer and employee.

As the Pacific Islands labour scheme has shown, this is one of the best ways Australia can engage the peoples of other nations. However, Labor's campaign promise to scrap the ASEAN farm workers scheme would have drastic consequences for existing agricultural labour shortages. It is Labor's intention to expand upon the existing Pacific Islanders Scheme instead. Although there is intent to use the scheme as a soft power strategy to stem Chinese influence within the Pacific region, this approach gives short shift to the crucial issue of Australia's food security.

In addition, if the scheme takes away skilled workers from some of the smaller Pacific states, the scheme could be criticised for stripping valuable finite labour pools within those countries. This might particularly be the case with a permanent residency track coupled to the visa scheme.

Are we seeing that Labor has already become captive to Pacific leaders' criticisms? During the election campaign, the Solomon Islands High Commissioner Robert Sisilo told the Australian media the ASEAN farm workers visa scheme would undermine the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme. This could be one of Labor's first major policy blunders.