Pacific workers routinely exploited across Australia’s farms
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The Seasonal Workers Program (SWP) and Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) [now merged into the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme] were widely regarded as being the best regulated farm visa programs. Yet these were recently exposed for “modern slavery” when a a class action was lodged against labour hire firms on behalf of Pacific Island workers amid a “pandemic of worker abuse”.
According to Stewart Levitt of law firm Levitt Robinson:
“There is literally a race to the bottom, intensified by the ramping up of the SWP by the federal government”…
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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
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