Harvest worker shortage laid bare by David Littleproud

Only a tiny fraction of Pacific Island workers pre-vetted to solve Australia’s harvest labour shortage have materialised — and the finger is being pointed at the nation’s state governments.

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, seen at Parliament House in Canberra last month, blames the states for the current harvest worker shortage. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

JUST 1500 of the 22,000 summer harvest workers from Pacific Island nations pre-vetted by the Federal Government have arrived on Australian shores to start work.

And the states’ desire to “own quarantine” amid the coronavirus pandemic is to blame for the less than 7 per cent of the Pacific Island workers arriving, according to Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud.

Farmers were now having to let their crops “fall to the ground” and “basically rot”, Mr Littleproud told Sky News this week.

“We’ve known about this since March and I made sure the agriculture minister from each state understood the severity of this and the problem we were going to get when we hit the hotter months,” he said.

“Since August we’ve been saying to the states, you can bring them in.”

Mr Littleproud cited the Northern Territory, which had brought some mango pickers in around September, as the only jurisdiction to act.

“The other states effectively haven’t done anything with respect to this. There’s only been about 1500 (Pacific Island workers come in),” he said.

“When we opened up in August, we had 22,000 pre-vetted work-ready men and women from 10 Pacific nations ready to come to the country.

“The states from the start through national cabinet said that they wanted to own quarantine, public health was their responsibility, which it is and we respect that.

“But we are now at a juncture where we are seeing farmers making … commercial decisions about ploughing crops in and letting crops fall to the ground and basically rot because they do not have the bodies on the ground.”