WA government fruit picking ad campaign prompts derision from growers

Amid a shortage of fruit pickers, the WA government has released an ultra-stylised ad that has left growers uncomfortable | WATCH

An ad campaign from the WA government is aimed at luring idle youngsters from the city out to the country to help fill a chronic looming shortage of fruit pickers and harvesters.

Soaked in golden afternoon sunlight, laughing merrily, two beautifully manicured young women stroll arm in arm through an orchard. Almost as an afterthought, one of them reaches over and plucks what appears to be a solitary cherry.

The scene is part of an advertising campaign from the Western Australian government aimed at luring idle youngsters from the city out to the country to help fill a chronic looming shortage of fruit pickers and harvesters.

It’s a depiction that has prompted derision from growers and which has even left the state’s agriculture minister Alannah MacTiernan feeling uncomfortable.

Strawberry farmer Neil Handasyde is among those growers increasingly anxious about the sector’s ability to find enough workers, but he believes the advertisement’s ultra-stylised, unrealistic depiction of fruit-picking life is no good for anyone.

“They didn’t look like workers did they?” he said.

“I know there’s a disconnect with rural and city but that doesn’t help. It looks like they’re on a wine tour.”

Called Work and Wander Out Yonder, the campaign advertisements pitch regional work as a holiday for city residents. Other images from the video include a quiet empty beach with perfect surf in the wine region of Margaret River, and a happy and relaxed young people at a country pub.

“It’s more like The Sound of Music than the reality of harvest time,” Donnybrook apple grower Steve Dilley said.

Steve Thomas, the WA Liberals’ spokesman on agriculture sees a lack of understanding on display in the advertisement that flippantly describes a massive header cutting through a crop as “the company car in the wheatbelt”.

WA agriculture minister Alannah MacTiernan, left, from her time picking fruit as a young adult. Picture: Supplied

“No farmer in their right mind is going to put a visiting metropolitan backpacker or new graduate trainee into a $750,000 header and send them out into the paddocks” Dr Thomas said

For the leader of the Nationals in WA, who has spent her political career trying to entice more people out to the country, the ad’s depictions are too much.

“I love the thought that people are thinking about coming and potentially working in regional WA, but you have to be realistic. What it‘s done is reduced a really serious industry issue down to ‘let’s all go and have a jolly holiday, and we’ll pick some fruit while we’re at it’,” she said.

“It’s all a bit twee.”

The sentiments are shared by Ms MacTiernan herself.

Asked by The Australian if the depictions of fruit-picking were unrealistic, Ms MacTiernan said she “didn’t disagree”.

“We have suggested that,” she said.

Ms MacTiernan should know the realities of fruit-picking life better than most. As a young adult, she quit a “hideous” job at a sock factory to spend several months living in a $10 tent from Target and working as a fruit-picker.

Bending over all day picking beans was “the worst”, while cherrypicking was “quite pleasant”.

“We had the time of our life and we spend all our money on Camel cigarettes and Kentucky Fried,” she said.

Coincidentally, one of the photographs from Ms MacTiernan’s fruit picking days shows her wearing a hat and top with more than a passing resemblance to those worn by one of the video’s giggling orchard-strollers.

Maybe the ad isn’t so over the top after all.