The Hon. David Littleproud, Leader of The Nationals, Media Release, 2 March 2023
Six months after the Jobs and Skills Summit, Labor has only delivered a fraction of the 172,000 workers that farmers need to keep food prices down, fuelling a cost-of-living crisis.
Leader of The Nationals David Littleproud said Agriculture Minister Murray Watt hadn’t delivered any tangible results on the Summit’s Agricultural Workforce Working Group, placing further pressure on food production and the cost of groceries at the check-out.
“Families are struggling to pay for groceries but the increased bills are a Labor-made crisis,” Mr Littleproud said.
“Common sense tells you when supply goes down, prices goes up, which is why the latest figures from the Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed the cost of food and non-alcoholic drink has increased by 8.2 per cent over the past 12 months.
“Labor scrapped the Ag visa which gave farmers the workers they needed to plant crops and produce food.”
Despite Minister Watt acknowledging the workforce shortage was “the biggest issue that’s been raised with me by farmers and farm groups”, Senate Estimates revealed Labor had rejected interest from other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), who wanted to send workers to Australia under the Ag visa, in addition to Vietnam.
“Accepting workers from ASEAN would go a long way to easing the cost-of-living crisis, because the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme doesn’t have the supply of labour needed by farmers.”
Mr Littleproud added Minister Watt’s so-called ‘tripartite’ Agriculture Workforce Working Group set up in October 2022 had proven nothing more than a talk fest, without any substantive outcomes for farmers.
“It is no surprise to farmers that the loudest critics of the Ag visa, the Australian Workers’ Union, now headline this working group and are suffocating any genuine help for the farming sector.
“Minister Watt and Labor must immediately reinstate the Ag visa as a priority and take up the ASEAN offer to send workers, to fill chronic workforce shortages and help Australian families.”
