Australia’s Asean farm worker visa hits snag – from Malaysia

 

From Murray Hunter

The Malaysian government has vetoed the possibility of Malaysians working on Australian farms.

The long-awaited Asean farm work visa to Australia to enable Asean skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled farm workers to be employed on Australian farms was ratified by the governor-general last week. Now workers from participating Asean countries will be able to enter into employment agreements with Australian farmers.

Although the legislation is enacted, there are still many unsettled details about precisely how the new visa will work.

Obtaining labour is critical to much of Australia’s farm industry, which is suffering severe shortages, particularly around harvest time. Seasonal workers from the UK have dried up due to border closures during the pandemic, and local urban unemployed cannot be attracted to farms for this seasonal work.

There has been a lot of criticism of this new visa, primarily over the potential avenues for exploitation of workers that may occur. The union movement is also concerned that Asean farm workers would depress wage levels, while state health authorities are concerned about the logistics of quarantine measures.

The Asean farm worker scheme is only intended as a supplement to the Pacific Australian Labour Mobility Scheme (PALM Scheme), which has brought 15,600 Pacific Island and Timor Leste workers to Australia. Of this number, 12,000 have arrived in Australia since September last year. This figure is expected to double over the next year.

There are also an additional 55,000 screened workers in the Pacific Island who will be able to come to Australia for work. Pacific Island governments are also critical of the Asean scheme as they see it as taking potential jobs of the existing Pacific Islands’ labour pool that is waiting to come.

The first cohort of workers is expected to arrive in Australia between December 2021 and March 2022. This will be subject to international borders opening and the settling of quarantine issues. This is still an unsolved logistical problem, with farmers suggesting farm quarantine arrangements. Although quarantine is a federal responsibility, states have been operating the logistics since the beginning of the pandemic.

Visa hits snag in Malaysia, Cambodia

The new Asean farm worker visa is an employer-sponsored arrangement which is subject to an employment contract meeting specified standards and obligations. However, the Malaysian government, for the first time, has decided to ban Malaysian citizens from working in Australia under this visa.

Deputy human resources minister Awang Hashim told the Dewan Negara last week that Malaysia would not take part in the scheme. Awang declared that the Australian visa was a pathway to permanent residence, and thus not acceptable to the Malaysian government.

In addition, the Australian scheme would compete against the new government’s programme of replacing foreign plantation workers with Malaysian workers. Under the Malaysianisation programme, local workers would be eligible to receive an incentive of RM500 or 20% per month of their wage, based on a minimum wage of RM1,500 per month.

Malaysians have long travelled to Australia to work, often illegally, on Australian farms, earning approximately RM12,000 per month, the majority being Chinese and Indians. With accommodation often provided by farmers, most are able to return home with savings. This appears more lucrative to working on an oil palm plantation for RM2,000, under hard living conditions.

In addition to claiming that the Australian farm worker visa would lead to permanent residence, Awang claimed that both the Australian and Malaysian work was dirty, dangerous, and difficult. However, according to the Australian department of foreign affairs and trade, Australian farm jobs must meet existing occupational health and safety standards, and this visa does not have any path to regional settlement or permanent residence.

Australian farm work is the only overseas work Malaysians have been stopped from engaging. Malaysians are free to work in primary industries in neighbouring Singapore, Brunei, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.

There has been a backlash against human resources minister M Saravanan on social media, with some claiming they have been robbed of a lifetime opportunity because of an irrational decision regarding the Australian visa.

Malaysia is not the only country putting impediments in the way of local workers coming to Australia on the farm work visa.

The ministry of labour and vocational training in Cambodia has indicated that it would want to control worker outflow to Australia. The insertion in Australian legislation of the phrase “participating country” rather than citizens of Asean countries has allowed Asean bureaucracies to add an additional tier of red tape to farm workers coming to Australia to work. This has been shown not to always be in the farm workers’ interests. A network of unscrupulous middlemen is springing up in Asean countries to exploit potential visa applicants.

In effect, Asean bureaucracies have put a dent in what could have been a win-win situation for Australian farmers and Asean farm workers, many suffering from under-employment due to the pandemic. Malaysians will now have to look elsewhere. - FMT

Murray Hunter is a FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.