A plane load of 162 fruit pickers from Tonga touched down in Australia this week joining another 202 workers from the Pacific Island nation who have recently arrived.
While the previous bunch headed to North Queensland to pick mangoes and grapes, the new group are in hotel quarantine preparing to pick berries in the cooler climate of Tasmania.
Australia’s fruit growers are highly dependent on seasonal workers who travel from other countries, such as backpackers, with coronavirus travel bans having decimated their workforce.
A plane load of 162 workers from Tonga touched down in Tasmania this week to help pick fruit amid a labour shortage (pictured: Pacific Island workers pick berries in Australia in November)
Nine Pacific Island nations are able to bypass travel bans to work on Australian farms (pictured) as a gap of 26,000 seasonal workers is dealt with by produce growers
The Tongan workers, who landed in Hobart on Monday evening as part of the Pacific Labour Scheme, will work on farms in the Devonport and Launceston area, including Hillwood Berries on the Tamar River.
Simon Dornauf, Hillwood’s farm manager, said the Tongan visitors would pick blackberries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, once they had finished the 14-day quarantine.
‘The guys that are currently with us have been doing some considerably long days at the moment, so it’ll just ease the burden on those guys once they get out of the quarantine period,’ Mr Dornauf told the Examiner.
‘We are in the middle of our peak right now. So they’re going to miss that but that’s just the nature of the quarantine windows that we’ve had.’
There are currently 260 seasonal workers and 100 locals working at Hillwood Berries, just one farm among Tasmania’s $80million a year berry industry.
Pacific Islander workers (pictured) were allowed to travel to Australia despite border closures, though the number who have flown into the country is only about 1,000
Tasmania’s berry industry is worth $80million a year with farms in the states employing thousands of workers (stock image)
Mr Dornauf explained the new workers are the ‘last piece of the puzzle’ needed for the farm to successfully harvest and pack their produce for supermarkets.
Citizens of Tonga, which has not had one reported case of coronavirus, are able to get nine month working visas in Australia despite international borders being closed in March to combat the spread Covid.
Other countries which can apply to the Pacific Labour Scheme are Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Less then 1,500 Pacific Island workers have flown to Australia under the eased restrictions.
Farms across the country have been scrambling to fill 26,000 seasonal jobs to harvest and pack produce for supermarkets after international borders closed.
The government recently offered Australian locals up to $6,000 in cash if they relocate to regional areas for farm work for just six weeks.
The cash back is provided on money spent to take on the work – such as plane tickets, accommodation, work clothes, meals, and car hire.
More information on the government’s Relocation Assistance to Take Up a Job for short-term Agricultural work can be found on the Department of Education, Skills and Employment website.
Australian fruit growers (pictured) are struggling to find workers to pick and pack fruit for supermarket shelves
