Pacific island workers in Australia under a working visa scheme will have to wait nine months longer for changes that would boost their wages.
Workers from 10 countries can come to Australia and be employed across a range of sectors including agriculture and meat processing to fill labour gaps under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.
They have to be paid for at least 120 hours per month but this was set to change to at least 30 hours a week from July 1.
Hours would be averaged over the course of a month, meaning some weeks workers could do 20 hours and then others more than 40.
By ensuring people need to be paid for 30 hours a week, this could increase wage payments as businesses would need to account for extra hours in slower weeks, and then still pay overtime in busier weeks.
This change has been pushed back until 31 March 2026 as the federal government reviews the terms following consultations.
“We’ve listened very closely to PALM stakeholders, farmers, labour hire firms, unions, Pacific nations,” Employment Minister Murray Watt told AAP.
“Our view is it’s best to leave the PALM settings as they are for the moment while we better understand the impact of the changes that we’ve made.”
His department has been reviewing the scheme’s minimum hours requirement to ensure Pacific workers are adequately paid and not suffering from any unreasonable cost deductions during their time in Australia.
“Having done this work to try to stop the exploitation of workers, we didn’t want to reopen the door to that again,” he said.
Officials from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations are set to be grilled on the scheme at a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday as overall numbers dwindle by a few thousands participants.
There were some 27,000 participants in the scheme working across almost 500 businesses, in every Australian state and territory.
Amongst them are 6,982 Solomon Islanders working in the agriculture, meat and aged-care sectors.
Last year, they sent home $431 million in remittances, according to the Australian High Commission in Honiara.
The Solomon Islands Government wants to see the number increase to 16,000 by 2028.
While the PALM scheme has been typically involved with the agriculture and meat processing industries, in recent years it has branched out into aged care, hospitality and tourism, and now early childhood.
Road deaths also remain a major concern for Pacific workers in rural and regional Australia.
Road safety, cultural training and accommodation conditions are being examined in the second stage of the department’s review into the scheme.
It was a major point of discussion when Senator Watt hosted envoys from PALM scheme nations at Parliament House in December. – with reporting from AAP
