Cancelled seasonal worker flight rescheduled for June, six weeks later

It will be another seven weeks before growers who lost critical labour when a flight of 140 farm workers was cancelled have the help they were banking on for harvest. The flight from Vanuatu — which would have arrived last Friday — was scrapped last month amid changes to the State’s hotel quarantine system meant there was no longer capacity to take them, sending shock waves through the State’s $900 million horticulture industry. It sparked fears future flights would be jeopardised, with some growers facing ploughing in crops which they had no workers to pick. But the State Government has revealed the majority of the workers have had their flights rescheduled and will touch down on WA soil in June. A quarantine hotel “dedicated” to seasonal workers in Perth’s CBD, likely the Novotel Langley, is anticipated to be in place by then, with the capacity to take two flights of farm workers a month. WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan said they were “focused on ensuring continuity of supply of workers” for growers. “The majority of workers initially scheduled to arrive on the early May flight have been assigned to two proposed June flights,” she said. “We are working with industry and the Federal Government to finalise plans for flights in June and July.” VegetablesWA confirmed three flights from Vanuatu were being proposed based on grower demand — June 17, July 2 and July 20. It will mean workers from the cancelled May 7 flight arrive on June 17, nearly six weeks after the original date. They will then undertake their mandatory 14-day quarantine before being deployed to WA farms. VegetablesWA president Damir Kuzmicich said not all of the workers on the May 7 flight would be coming, but those that were would be on the earliest proposed flight. “We are hoping to get firm approval from the State Government for the June 17 flight within the next week,” he said. “Most workers were rescheduled to the June 17 flight; however, some were no longer required, as decided by the approved employers.” With the hotel quarantine capacity to take two flights of farm workers a month, Mr Kuzmicich said the industry body had put forward dates for future flights right through to December, but it was unlikely they would be confirmed that far in advance. “We have proposed a flight schedule for the rest of 2021,” he said.