16 February 2009
DAFF09/82T
Victorian fires, floods in northern Australia, damage to fruit and vegetables, Pacific Island Guest Worker Scheme
Morrison: Mr Burke, good morning.
Burke: G’day Jason.
Morrison: G’day nice to talk to you again. We look at the vegetable and fruit industries at the moment, but let’s start with timber. I mean this is something that can’t be overlooked, so much of forest area in Victoria is grown for timber and grown for that, and we are now going to have enormous amounts of shortages.
Burke: I was talking to one of the blokes from Timber Communities last week and at that point they were estimating 100,000 hectares of native forest that would have been available for production just gone. And a smaller amount, but still a large amount of plantation timber.
He said to me that people are dealing with the loss of life, the loss of homes and now they’re also having to question the extent to which there is an immediate future for them in their industry. Some of the timber mills themselves have gone down.
So the damage to the timber industry we still can’t fully quantify. But it is deeply serious and there are a lot of jobs at stake in Victoria on that.
Morrison: Yeah, it almost feels crass to be discussing this in the context of people losing their lives, but what we’re pointing out here is that there is a universal impact of all of this, that goes beyond what is happening specifically in Victoria.
Around the country at the moment, and indeed with North Queensland and the flooding, and even the stuff in NSW in recent times, we have what is going to be a real stress on the prices of fruit and vegetables and whatever else and it can’t be overlooked.
Burke: Well that’s right. It’s exactly the way you say it there Jason. People have been understandably reluctant to look at these things straight up.
And part of the reason why we don’t have fully accurate assessments of everything yet is: how do you ask a farmer about how much stock they’ve lost, while the whole nation’s counting how many friends they’ve lost.
The challenges there, there’s a time to work through these issues. So, this week I’ll be heading down to Victoria myself and we’ll start looking at those extra costs to business.
Nothing will ever compare to the devastating impact on human lives, the human tragedy of this last week.
We do have some capacity to limit how much of a hit the farmers take and price impacts, by whether or not we’re willing for the next few months to be a little bit less fussy.
I’ve been guilty of it myself. You go to the fruit and vege shop and you turn your nose up at something that’s got the tiniest blemish. If there was ever a time to be fussy, it’s not the next few weeks.
Whether it’s fruit from the floods in Queensland or fruit and veges that have gone through a bit of stress because of what’s happened in Victoria, there’s a whole lot of produce that will help farmers to keep their livelihoods going if we’re a little bit less fussy. And we can minimise the price impact the same way.
Morrison: I mean you’ve got to accept I guess that it tastes just as good even if it is a bit bumped.
Burke: It tastes every bit as good. It’s just a matter of making sure your hand doesn’t pass over it when you’re filling the plastic bag at the shop.
Morrison: That is a reasonable sort of request, in the context of what is an east coast emergency in this country with demands on the farming industry, I can understand that. Do you know how long it’s going to take before things start to restore, is there any estimate on that?
Burke: Well on fresh produce, it depends whether you’re dealing with permanent plantings or not. For your veges, you’re looking at a much shorter period of time. Similarly your blemished fruit is something that’s more immediate.
There have been some plantings, permanent plantings, that have just been destroyed. And you’re looking at three to five years for them to get back to be producing fruit again. So, there’ll be some areas where we actually are looking at a lasting impact in terms of availability of supply. And the other thing that nobody has been able to count yet, is the impact on the beef industry from those Queensland floods. When we had, I visited the floods up in Emerald when they were there last year, and at that point it was quite easy for us to get helicopters and do fodder drops, so that the cattle that moved to higher ground could still eat. The size of the flooding in Queensland has been bigger than the state of South Australia. And when you’re dealing with that sort of scale, you just can’t get choppers in and out, those sorts of distances, reaching every corner to make sure you’re keeping the stock alive.
Morrison: It is an extraordinary area. To our north, it is just beyond most people’s comprehension how much land is affected by all of this. And especially with our attention on all that is going on in the south, the impact on those communities will be felt, from any estimate for many years in Queensland as they try to rebuild on it, so it’s a timely warning. Look, while I have you here, something that I think people in this country find a bit hard to come to terms with is, when the Government is anticipating an increase in unemployment and we’re talking all the time about having to save jobs and to make sure that the economy can sustain people in jobs. And I read today that we begin our guest worker program today. Workers coming in from Pacific Islands, up to 2400 of them by the middle of the year and 50 of them fly in today. It does feel like one hand doesn’t talk to the other in Government. Why are we proceeding with this?
Burke: Can I tell you one of the interesting things there Jason, is it never mattered what the unemployment rate was. The farmers have been complaining for decades about trying to get enough workers to pick the fruit. And the nature of this work is it is often only for a few weeks. So people looking for permanent work, you know Australians have always been less likely to go do it, you get some backpackers doing it, you get some grey nomads picking it up, but the farmers have just been sick to death of having fruit that ends up falling rotten to the ground, without being able to get it picked.
Morrison: But that was then. I mean, we’re in different times now. And this was decided six months ago to do it, which is something that the Government decided because at the time we were near full employment. And now companies are shedding casual workers, and that will be in country towns as well. Wouldn’t it be a wise move, to say well hang on, rip the break up on bringing people in for a second and lets reassess. Because at the moment it feels like we’ve made the decision, we’re going to bring 2400 in and that’s that.
Burke: Can I just say Jason, even when we’ve had previously times of high unemployment, the farmers have continued to complain that they can’t get people to pick the fruit. There is something about this job, that no matter where the unemployment figure has been, the farmers have been in a situation of putting all the money….
Morrison: Well, it’s hard work. We know what the answer is, it’s hard work. But then, lets make it hard work to get access to the facilities that make it easy to stay unemployed then.
Burke: There’s a whole lot of arguments and things that can be done on that end. Not arguing with that at all. What we’ve got, in terms of total numbers, and the demand of industry, it’s actually a tiny [inaudible], a very modest pilot, what’s being run here. We just couldn’t continue to leave farmers in a situation of watching what they’ve watched every year, while we say ‘oh look, we reckon we might be able to push a little bit harder here or a little bit harder there.’ Governments of both sides have been letting farmers down on this one for decades.
Morrison: Well, now’s your chance. Now’s your chance not to push a little bit here and there, but to push hard and say sorry, you will not get access to unemployment benefits unless you seriously take up and act in these jobs. And in country towns, you’ve got to say, in the last two or three months, there has been a real shift in the way the workforce is being filled. And casual workers have been the first to get dropped. And a lot of these people might work in casual positions in country towns and yet it just feels like we’ve drawn a line and said we’ll never fill that with Aussies, so lets bring foreigners in.
Burke: Yeah Jason I think, one of the good things about us doing it as a pilot, is we’ll be able to see that. There’s only a couple of locations where these workers will be brought in, so we’ll be able to see the difference there. While for most country towns, exactly the sort of drivers that you refer to, will be where the pressure is put. If we were doing it full scale, then I think what you’re saying about reaching for the handbrake, would be a pretty strong argument. But given that we’re just doing it in a couple of places, I think we’ll at least be able to see those comparisons while we’re still making sure there’s job opportunities everywhere else.
Morrison: Mr Burke, thanks very much for joining us.
END