An orange orchard near Leeton NSW
An orange orchard near Leeton NSW (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

For a few years as an anthropologist at the Australian National University, I found myself a job trying to make sense of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. Writing on it could be fraught.

On my feeds, conspiratorial screeds from people convinced the scheme was some kind of slave trading racket sat uneasily alongside corporate schmaltz claiming all was well. 

The reality was far more complicated.

To be fair, Australia does have a dark and continuing history of slave labour, including from the Pacific, but that is not what PALM is.

Fruit-pickers today are largely young and foreign, here seeking money and a way to see the world. There are two main types. “Backpackers” (popularly imagined as happy-go-lucky Europeans between music festivals but these days hailing from more than 40 countries) and workers from the Pacific under the PALM scheme.

Backpackers have a pretty free go of it. They need to speak English, have health insurance, $5000 in the bank and some tertiary education. Once in Australia, aside from needing to annually clock up a certain number of days in agriculture or another essential industry to have their visas renewed, they can do more or less as they please. 

PALM is more restrictive. Businesses in regional Australia can apply to be an “approved employer”, which gives them the right to employ workers from one of nine Pacific countries and Timor-Leste. Accommodation and transport are provided, albeit partially at the worker’s expense. Once here, workers cannot freely work elsewhere.

Some workers stay in Australia for up to four years, but most are shorter term (typically six to nine months). There are now more than 19,000. 

On the job, in theory, PALM pickers have the same conditions and pay as any Australian. Rumours that they are officially forbidden from joining unions or paid less than Australians are not true. They are also supposed to have access to options for pastoral care and mechanisms for addressing grievances.

Thanks to the Australian Workers’ Union, a loophole relating to piece rates that had resulted in some being underpaid was closed in 2020. Wage deductions are supposed to cover only the basics, and be in writing. Conditions, housing and pay are all supposed to be vetted as being up to Australian standards.

If you have patience and good eyesight it’s all here.

There are two main issues. One is that PALM workers are subject to these conditions while their backpacker colleagues are not. It’s patronising, at best. The other is that if the PALM system isn’t working (or is being abused) this lack of freedom puts workers under it in a difficult position.

I’m an anthropologist, so rather than, say, contracting a company to do a survey, I would go out and get to know people, often over the years. I even picked fruit for a couple of seasons. A lot of what I heard and saw was positive, but just about everyone had a story of a time they had complained on-site and heard this: “If you don’t like it, go home.”

But could they? Backpackers can and do quit and move on. PALM workers can’t. This sort of thing might be difficult for an economist staring at a spreadsheet to understand, but they typically have extended families depending on them, and few other options should they lose their job. Consequently they feel they have no option but to accept whatever comes their way.

That is a real and dangerous imbalance of power.

So we have a visa designed to encourage young people from all over the world to explore Australia, operating alongside another visa that is especially for people from the Pacific that mostly prevents them from doing that, and indeed makes them comparatively unfree. No wonder thousands seek other options after they get here.

So where to for PALM?

There are certainly groups of people in the Pacific who would struggle to meet the criteria for a backpacker visa but would benefit greatly from the chance to work in Australia. Indeed originally it was such neglected segments of the population that recruitment was supposed to focus on.

On the Australian side, there are farmers who like the opportunity PALM presents of getting the same workforce back year after year — rarely possible with backpackers. Clearly there is a continued place for a PALM scheme, albeit perhaps smaller or at least better targeted.

At the same time, Australian policymakers need to understand how dynamic Pacific nations are. Their fast-growing cities and towns are full of young people who would jump at the opportunity to see some more of the world and save up a little money, and are in no need of a managed program that effectively restricts their ability to do so.

There is no justification for denying this cohort the opportunity to come here independently as backpackers. This could happen at the stroke of a minister’s pen. And if we’re going to refer to Pacific nations as “family”, we can really do no less.