Queensland backpackers being coerced into sex to obtain visas

FEMALE backpackers working on southeast Queensland farms are being coerced into performing sexual favours in exchange for visa sign-offs.

Legal brothel worker Yuri. Prostitution. Prostitute.

FEMALE backpackers working on southeast Queensland farms are being coerced into performing sexual favours in exchange for visa sign-offs.

Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Kevin Cocks said there were about a dozen complaints to the commission relating to exploitation of workers in the Lockyer Valley in the past 18 months.

The foreign workers have to complete three months of work in rural Australia to earn an extension on their one-year working holiday, subclass 417 visa.

But Mr Cocks said this could make them vulnerable to exploitation by dodgy contractors.

“It ranges from what under our legislation would be civil offences like sexual harassment, right through to criminal offences,” he told AAP.

While male travellers were prone to being short-shifted on wages and accommodation, some of their female counterparts were also having to deal with sexual harassment.

However such incidents were rarely reported to police because workers had culturally based suspicions of authorities or feared they would be deported, he said.

A Queensland Police Service spokesman confirmed no official allegations of sexual crime by backpackers against contractors have been received.

“It’s quite an important issue from a human rights perspective,” Mr Cocks said.

“But at a practical level, if farmers are not going to be able to get workers to take their crops, Australia ... is also suffering quite an economic loss.”

Although the issue transcends state boundaries, Mr Cocks said the state government could help tighten accreditation requirements for contractors to try to weed out the “unscrupulous” ones.

Local communities can also play an important role by building ties with backpackers, helping them feel less isolated if they are mistreated, he said.

“(They) need to take an active interest because at the end of the day it is their community that is being tarnished,” he said.