A wage rise is, these days, UnAustralian:
Younger Australians will be offered new incentives to fill a growing jobs gap in the regions as part of a budget package that aims to boost farm production to $100 billion within a decade.
The new measures seek to encourage people on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance to take the farming jobs when the industry cannot recruit enough foreign workers during the pandemic.
The Morrison government also wants to encourage foreign backpackers to stay in Australia longer and keep working in agriculture at a time when new travellers cannot replace those who have left the country.
How does mining attract workers to godforsaken reaches? By paying excellent wages.
Let wages rise and farmers will have to automate and lift productivity, boosting profits and wages. Flood them with cheap labour and they’ll employ ever more slaves that add nothing to the economy, capital will shallow, and both wages and profits will decline.
If margins are so weak that they can’t do it then let ’em burn and economies of scale will take care of it as the industry consolidates.
Why should taxpayers fork out to farmers to subsidise wages? No reason except that they are represented by the most corrupt identity politics party in Australia: The Nationals. Or is that the Coalition and its War on Youth?
A federal Liberal MP has floated a conscription-style system applying “heat and pressure” on unemployed people to fill farm jobs.
Sydney-based backbencher John Alexander is keen to hit welfare recipients with more stick and less carrot ahead of upcoming fruit and vegetable harvests.
“We need some more teeth,” he told a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday.
“While we can’t probably go to conscription, can we apply a little more heat and pressure and do it urgently, because the crops won’t wait.”
Farmers have warned of crippling labour shortages with coronavirus restrictions cutting off the supply of foreign workers.
Earlier, Mr Alexander raised physical examinations similar to military conscription for people out of work.
How about John Alexander get out there and do it instead. He’s useless where he is.
