Backpackers are unreliable in the fruit-picking business because despite the training invested in them, few return for the next season’s work. This has had industry bodies calling for an expansion of the Seasonal Worker Scheme to include South East Asian workers in order to provide the industry with a pool of reliable trained workers who will likely return each season.

The Seasonal Worker Program has been running since 2012 and currently allows farmers to employ workers from eight Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste, but only when they cannot find enough local workers to meet seasonal demand.

The ABC reports that the Northern Territory's new parliamentary secretary for Northern Development has backed calls from Top End growers to expand the Seasonal Worker Program to address labour shortages in horticulture.

Country Liberal MLA and mango grower Gary Higgins, says the Territory's mango industry would be better off, and could even expand, if workers were allowed in from South East Asian countries such as Vietnam.

He says the industry needs an alternative to backpackers.

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This is the email being sent out by the Perth Parent visa centre (note no officer first or last name and no position number, just 'Admin'):

UNCLASSIFIED

As no mail could be delivered on 2nd June due to the public holiday in WA and as that mail would have been in the GPO before the repeal date any mail coming from the post office and delivered on the 3rd will be accepted as valid. Couriered applications will not be accepted as valid.

Admin
Parent Visa Centre
Department of Immigration and Border Protection

The former Labour government’s overhauled business migration program saw a 90 percent fall in visa grants to business migrants due to unrealistic criteria. A joint parliamentary inquiry, essentially set up to study the failure of Business Innovation and Investment Program (BIIP),  and make recommendations,  has heard the program is “plagued by slow processing, unpredictable outcomes and selection criteria that deter good candidates in a search for ideal, younger migrants”.

The Australian reports that only 652 visas were granted over the first 21 months of the BIIP scheme, since its introduction in 2012.  That compares with 6790 in the final year of the system it ­replaced, the Business Skills ­Program. The department, in its submission to the inquiry, indicated the plunge in applicants “will make it increasingly difficult to maintain the number of business migrants as a proportion of the overall permanent migration program”.

“While there are sufficient ­applications under the previous business skills program to guarantee the 2013-14 program, the application rate may put the delivery of the 2014-15 program in question,” the submission read.

Sydney legal firm Immigration Solutions Lawyers, in its submission, blamed the “enormous decline” in applicants to “overly onerous” selection criteria that strive for an unrealistic ideal.

“A desirable candidate is someone between 35-39 years of age with a business turnover that is not under $1 million, with at least four years business experience and who has $1.3m in assets,” it read. “However, such a candidate would be unlikely to elect Australia due to heavy government regulation, taxation, and it being a relatively small market on the very outskirts of the Pacific Rim.”