Interview with Libby Price, Country Today

TUESDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2022

SUBJECTS: Agriculture benefits from Jobs & Skills Summit; migration increases; fast-tracking visa applications; more fee free TAFE places; good conditions for workers; ABARES’ record-high ag exports

LIBBY PRICE, HOST: The National Jobs and Skills Summit is done and dusted, and Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has organised a tripartite group to work through the labour issues for agriculture. Murray Watt joins us this morning. Welcome back to Country Today.
 
MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: G’day, Libby. Good to talk to you again.

LIBBY PRICE: What is this tripartite group and what will it do?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, Libby I think this is a really important breakthrough in some of the workforce shortages that our ag sector has been experiencing for so long. I mean, let’s face it, this is not a new issue, this has been a problem for years now. Farmers haven’t been able to get the workers they need and, in some cases, workers haven’t been able to get the sort of pay and conditions that they’re after. So, what we’re trying to do with this tripartite group is bring together farm groups along with unions and Government to try to negotiate a way forward. And I think it’s a really healthy step that we had the National Farmers’ Federation in the same room as some of the work unions that cover agricultural workers for the first time in years.

One of the things we’re trying to do as a new government is really bring back a spirit of cooperation into how government works and how we solve problems across the country and in ag, by actually sitting down and working together. We’ve already been able to get some good outcomes out of the Jobs Summit that will benefit the ag sector pretty much straight away and, of course, this group will now work cooperatively to progress some of the other things that are going to take a bit longer.

LIBBY PRICE: So, I guess there’s two facets to the union side to it. Firstly, that they’re happy to welcome more skilled workers in from overseas.

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I think that everyone has had to give a bit of ground through the Jobs and Skills Summit. No one has got every single thing that they’ve wanted and that’s what compromise is. So, unions have given some ground on bringing in more migrants into the country and I think that’s one of the really important things for ag is that what we’ve done out of the summit is increase the cap on migration into the country to 195,000, and that will include 34,000 new migrants into regional areas specifically. That’s an increase on the amount that was allowed under the previous Government, and I know from the discussions I’ve been having with farmers and farm groups, an increase to the migration cap is a really important thing.

The other thing in the migration space is that I’ve had lots of farmers and meat processors complain to me about the backlog of visas. When we took office, there was a backlog of about a million visa applications that just hadn’t been cleared and we’ve agreed to put on 500 more staff in the Immigration Department to try to clear that backlog.

LIBBY PRICE: Good heavens. That’s an extraordinary number, isn’t it?

MURRAY WATT: It’s huge. It is huge. It has just blown out so much over recent years and, frankly, that’s because the previous Government just didn’t resource the Immigration Department to clear that backlog. But the other thing about this deal that we’ve come up with is it’s not just about bringing in migrants on farms. We also want to make sure that we are encouraging locals to take up careers in ag and make sure they’ve got the skills they need. And one of the things that we announced out of the summit is that we’re going to bring forward 180,000 fee-free TAFE places in a range of different occupations, and I’m going to be making sure that ag gets its share of that as well.

So, there’s some good outcomes there straightaway that ag will benefit from. It’s not as though they’ll get every migrant, and they won’t get every training place, but I want to make sure that ag gets its fair share. And then, as I say, this working group between us, the NFF, other farm groups and meat processors and the unions will tackle some of those long-term issues as well.

 LIBBY PRICE: Now, the other side of having the union in the group is that agriculture is not a very unionised workplace and there have been some abuses of workers, as we all know very well. Is this an opportunity for the union to get more of a stranglehold in agriculture? ‘Stranglehold’ is perhaps not the word but, you know, to get more involved.

 MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I think we’ve all got an interest in making sure that workers, whether they be on farms or any other workplace, get treated fairly, and you’re right, Libby, unfortunately we’ve seen too many examples where workers haven’t been treated fairly, whether it be working on farms or meat-processing sheds or anything else. And we need to be honest about that. We can pretend it doesn’t happen and then people just don’t get looked after properly and it tarnishes the industry’s reputation, or we can be honest about it and work together to solve the problems.

So, we took a couple of commitments to the last election about bringing in a national labour-hire licensing scheme because many of the abuses that we have seen have happened through labour-hire arrangements and we want to tidy that up. And we’ve also committed to do other things like if people are having their wages stolen from them, then that’s got to be a crime just as stealing from a shop would be a crime. So, there’s some things that we can do there that would tackle some of those exploitation issues that we have seen in agriculture because it’s in everyone’s interest that the industry has a good reputation and it’s seen as a good place to work. That’s one of the keys to making sure that people, whether they be locals or migrants, want to work on our farms.

LIBBY PRICE: Now, in a very timely reminder to everybody of the importance of agriculture, ABARES has today released its latest agricultural commodities report and it’s a pretty stellar result.

MURRAY WATT: Yes, and really fantastic news for our ag sector today, Libby, with the release of some new figures from ABARES, the government economic forecaster, saying that we’re expecting to exceed $70 billion in agricultural exports for the first time in our history. So, we’re looking at record exports this year and that reflects the record prices most farmers are getting for their product, the good demand that we’re seeing and the good demand especially overseas for our products in an environment when many other countries are struggling to feed themselves. So, I think it’s a reminder that even though there are challenges in agriculture, including workforce, overall, the industry is in good shape, returning good prices for farmers and really good dollars for the country. So it’s a really great day for agriculture and congrats to all the farmers and everyone out there who’s contributed to that.

LIBBY PRICE: Federal Minister for Agriculture, Murray Watt.

ENDS