The workplace minister has flagged he could make further changes to a flagship Pacific workers program to crack down on employers doing the wrong thing. Murray Watt says that there have been "far too many" instances of exploitation in the PALM scheme.
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00:00The PALM scheme is really important.
00:04It's really important not just for farmers, which rely on Pacific workers to fill labour
00:08gaps as well as increasingly other industries as well, but it's also important to the Pacific
00:13because it's a really critical source of income for Pacific island countries and also for
00:18families which often rely on remittances from schemes like PALM in order to keep afloat.
00:24Now this essentially brings some 30,000 workers to Australia every year to do work that needs
00:30to be done in sectors that might otherwise struggle to get workers.
00:35And there's no doubt that there have been over the years quite a few critics of the
00:38way that some employers, not all by any stretch of the imagination, but the way that some
00:43employers have abused and exploited workers who take part in it.
00:47We've seen instances, for example, just this week of the President of Timor-Leste complaining
00:52that too many workers were being essentially soaked, they were being forced to pay too
00:56much money for things like accommodation and for transport, and his argument is that that
01:02money should be paid directly to those workers instead.
01:05And you've also had the unions, in particular the ACTU, mounting a really forceful argument
01:10that too often bosses are too quick to look for loopholes in the scheme, to exploit workers,
01:16handing them not enough work to get by, charging them too much for accommodation and transport.
01:21Now interestingly, Murray Watt, the Minister for Workplace Relations, was asked about some
01:26of this recent criticism this morning, and he was pretty blunt in his responses.
01:31He said there had been too many instances of abuse, and also said that the government
01:35was looking at potentially taking further actions to change the settings in the scheme
01:40to make sure it was harder for employers to do the wrong thing.
01:43Let's take a listen to Murray Watt speaking earlier today.
01:47Now we have seen unfortunately far too many abuses of the PALM scheme, and it's important
01:52for Australia and our reputation that when people come to work in Australia, they don't
01:57get exploited and they get treated fairly.
02:01Unfortunately I am aware of some examples of that not happening in this very region,
02:04across Bundaberg, and we've seen the Fair Work Ombudsman take action against particular
02:08employers and particular labour hire firms who have done the wrong thing, and that's
02:12exactly the way it should be.
02:14We actually have made changes to the PALM scheme since coming to office a couple of
02:17years ago to try to reduce the exploitation that we've seen.
02:21We brought in, for example, minimum amounts of pay that need to be paid to people to make
02:26sure that they do have money in their pockets.
02:28We've made changes around the housing requirements, but what I can say is that wherever there
02:34is exploitation going on of PALM workers or local workers, as a Labor government, we will
02:39continue to take action and we're open to further changes.
02:42So Murray, what they're saying, he is aware of some instances of this exploitation and
02:47abuse of workers, but Stephen, do we have any sense of how deep these problems actually go?
02:52Look, in all honesty, Ruby, it's really difficult to get a complete grip on exactly how deep
02:57these problems run.
02:58There's no doubt that there have been instances of abuse.
03:01What's not easy to work out is whether this is endemic to the scheme or whether it is
03:05something that's more occasional.
03:08Academic work on this is really split.
03:09Some academics say that they've done surveys of the workers and they're confident that
03:13when you look at the way the scheme operates, it's not too bad at all, that accommodation
03:18isn't too expensive, that most workers are happy with their accommodation and happy with
03:22the way that they're treated.
03:24Other academics, though, who have done other forms of surveys say that no, there are actually
03:27deep-seated problems and that exploitation is, in some ways, at the heart of this scheme.
03:33There's no doubt that the money that this scheme brings in is invaluable and important,
03:38but just how deep these problems run is something that at this stage, at least to an outside
03:43observer, is difficult to say for certain.
03:46So some conflicting data.
03:47One thing we do know is that we have more and more workers leaving the scheme.
03:51What did the Minister have to say about that?
03:53Yeah, this has been an undeniable problem over the last year or so in particular.
03:57Now one in ten workers in Parma are essentially absconding or leaving the scheme.
04:02They're doing that for various reasons.
04:04Murray Watt says one of the main reasons is that sometimes workers just aren't getting
04:08the work that they need to pay their accommodation expenses and also send money home.
04:13The problem is, as the ABC's revealed previously, those people who do leave the scheme are often
04:17left destitute and homeless.
04:19Now Murray Watt says that he believes that the government can land on a solution to this,
04:24that they're working on finding solutions to this problem, but it's no doubt that it
04:28is one that has been growing over the last year or so.