Business ing institution competes with and undermines the capacity of local providers, noting concerns over “the high cost of the initiative and lack of integration with existing technical and vocational training systems.” APTC is an expensive model for vocational training: as it was established in 2008–09, APTC expenditure accounted for 22 per cent of Australia’s education spending in the Pacific. Even though APTC is preparing students with Australian-standard qualifications, only 1.7 percent of graduates had found employment outside their home country by mid-2011. Beyond training, Canberra is funding the World Bank to assist sending countries across the Pacific, in areas such as pre-departure and on-return briefings; developing a “Work-ready” pool of applicants who have met health checks; monitoring licensed recruitment agents and direct recruitment; strengthening the Labour Ministry’s management capacity and creating a marketing plan to promote the country’s workers to potential employers. AusAID is working with the World Bank across the Pacific (and with ILO in Timor) through a Training and Facilitation Team (TAFT) that assists each country with its initial Pre-Departure Briefing. In turn, Pacific countries are boosting staff to manage the programme, both at home and in Australia. For example, Nauru has appointed a SWP coordinator in the Department of the Chief Secretary and an officer in the Nauru Consulate General in Brisbane, while Timor-Leste has appointed a Labour Attaché in its embassy in Canberra. New countries involved While the original pilot began with four countries, the new SWP is open to a range of Forum Island Countries (Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu), along with Timor-Leste. Last June, Nauru became the first Forum member to sign an MOU for the new program (ironically just as Canberra is sending a new wave of people to the island, with asylum seekers arriving in Nauru under Australia’s offshore detention program for refugees). As a late entry to the original pilot, Timor-Leste sent its first group of 12 workers to Broome in Western Australia, working at the Cable Beach, Eco Beach and Mercure hotels as housekeeping, laundry, gardening or kitchen staff. Timor has now eagerly engaged with the SWP, with plans to recruit staff for the tourism industry across northern Australia. This is part of a much wider effort to access labour markets across the Asia-Pacific region—over the last three years Timor-Leste has sent more than a thousand workers to South Korea on 2-3 year contracts. Winning the majority of visas from the threeyear pilot, Tonga has historically been a laboursending country and has one of the highest rates of remittances in the world. But the expansion of seasonal worker and Working Holiday Maker programmes into Papua New Guinea and other Melanesian nations is a significant shift in regional labour trends. In September, as PNG’s Minister for Industrial Labour Relations Mark Maipakai welcomed home seasonal workers from Queensland and New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay, he noted: “The SWP is the first of its kind in our country’s history as Islands Business, November 2012
In August, members of Pacific communities living in Melbourne came together at the Australian South Pacific Islanders Forum. The rights of New Zealand passport holders and the exclusion of Fiji from seasonal workers programmes were high on the agenda.
PNG has largely been a labour-receiving country since Independence. Hence, labour-sending arrangements present new policy challenges and opportunities to the Government.” Since the RSE and PSWPS were created, however, Fiji has been excluded from both seasonal worker programmes, in the aftermath of the 2006 coup. In Australia, the local Fijian community is organising to lobby the Gillard government over Fiji’s exclusion from the SWP, arguing that visa restrictions on senior figures of the Bainimarama regime should not be extended to poor rural farmers seeking employment opportunities. In August, members of the Pacific communities living in Melbourne came together at the Australian South Pacific Islanders’ Forum. The rights of New Zealand passport holders and the exclusion of Fiji from seasonal workers programmes were high on the agenda. Local community member Semi Vuetibau told the Forum: “Because Fiji is not part of the scheme, it has created problems for those of us living here and for our community back home. For example, we have relatives and friends who are struggling to find work in Fiji or earn a decent living and they have heard about how much money they can earn working on the farms. So they come over on holiday visas and go and work on the farms illegally.” Vuetibau noted that for Fijians working in breach of their visa conditions, there is great potential for exploitation, which also places extra burdens on families, churches and the wider Fijian community living in Australia. “Most of them work the same hours as those working here legally, but they will get paid less and there’s nothing they can do about it,” he said. “We even hear of people who may not get paid and still there’s nothing they can do about it because they’re here illegally. They have no rights and no protection. If they get sick or in an accident, there is no medical cover which may be provided through the scheme. This places a
huge financial burden on family members or the community here.” Protecting workers? Even as the SWP expands to new sectors, there are still problems on the ground, with some workers facing problems over housing or guaranteed work in one location. In July, a group of Samoan workers in South Australia were relocated three times within a month, ending up in Victoria’s Sunraysia district when their housing and support fell through. According to Fair Work Australia, the government agency which regulates wages and working conditions in the Australian labour market, “workers employed through the programme have the same rights as other workers covered by Australia’s national workplace relations laws.” In reality, however, overseas workers with no citizenship rights are disadvantaged compared to their local counterparts and often have limited information on their rights in the workplace. There are practical reasons why some Pacific workers choose to keep their heads down and avoid complaints to the boss—the chance that an employer will invite you back for a second or third stint to work in Australia provides a disincentive for workers to assert their rights. Despite efforts to reduce the cost of sending money home—such as the website sendmoneypacific.org—Pacific workers still face higher costs than other regions to transmit funds to family or community. A 2011 study presented to the Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers Meeting found that the cost of remitting money to Pacific Islands countries ranges from 15-26 percent of the total amount, while global costs have fallen to 9 percent worldwide and just 5 percent in some regions. As new countries come into the scheme, there is also evidence in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea that some applicants are being ripped off by con-men, who charge fees to provide visas or guarantee a place in the scheme, then disappear with the money. In September, Australian and Solomon Islands officials increased their publicity about the government-run recruitment process, after reports that aspiring workers were being ripped off. The Australian High Commission in Honiara has announced that applicants should only apply through the Labour Mobility Unit created within the Solomons’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade or four registered Solomon Islands recruiting agents: Allen Sepe Agasi of Rosmat Enterprise; Jeremy Rua of Tribal Trading Company; Peter Kakamo of Grasrut Employment Management Service; and Tony Kwarafi of Islander Workforce. In spite of these problems, there are many workers still eager to join the seasonal work programmes. Since the RSE scheme started in 2007, a number of Pacific workers have returned to New Zealand for a second or third time, and researchers at Waikato University have found that there are increases in wages and productivity as the more experienced workers come back to the same property. With Australia’s conservative Coalition parties now endorsing the Seasonal Workers Programme—a policy shift since the Howard years—the issue of labour mobility will remain on the regional agenda in the coming years.