On Monday, 50 Tongan workers arrived in Australia among the first of 2500 unskilled migrants from Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Tonga promised harvesting work in Swan Hill and Griffith for up to seven months a year.
Since the scheme was announced last August, however, circumstances have changed. Unemployment is forecast to rise to 7 percent by next year and bushfires have scorched farmland in Victoria.
The opposition spokeswoman on immigration, Sharman Stone, said the plan, which was modeled on a similar trial in New Zealand, had been bungled from the start.
“This is an enormous embarrassment for Australia in the Pacific,” she said. “We have led these nations to believe there are 2500 opportunities to earn good money in Australia to send back to communities in the Pacific but instead we’ve had massive bungling and inefficiency.”
The almond-picking jobs available for the first 50 arrivals are in Robinvale, a town of 2200 in Victoria’s Swan Hill region. Growers in the New South Wales’ Riverina can also apply for temporary workers from overseas.
Stone said that Australians, particularly those hurt in the economic downturn, should be first in line for jobs. “Picking almonds at Robinvale may be just the sort of work our self-funded retirees may be looking to do,” she said. “We really have to look at Australia’s unemployed first.”
Australian Agriculture Minister Tony Burke defended the scheme, saying Australians did not want the seasonal work.
“It never mattered what the unemployment rate was. The farmers have been complaining for decades about trying to get enough workers to pick the fruit,” he said.
Burke repeated the imagery of fruit rotting on trees to illustrate why farmers wanted the scheme. At that time, the government said fruit pickers would arrive before Christmas.
The chief executive of Summerfruit, John Moore, welcomed the first workers but was disappointed they had not arrived sooner. “Finally something has begun to happen,” he said. “Hopefully, in the future the workers arrive at an appropriate time in the season, not at the end.”
Burke and Minister for Employment Julia Gillard admitted that demand for overseas workers was less than expected. Only four growers from the designated trial areas had registered interest and demand was likely to slow.
