Harvest labour crisis — “Get the army in to set up a tent city” as a temporary quarantine facility

A temporary quarantine “tent city” manned by the military in WA’s grainbelt could be the answer to getting skilled header drivers into the country, as the $6 billion industry grapples with a labour shortage and a looming record-breaking harvest. WA Farmers grains section president Mic Fels said some may call the idea “crazy” but the industry was “desperate” and had been pleading with both State and Federal governments to find a safe, workable solution for months. His suggestion comes just days after the advocacy body wrote to Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud and WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan calling for “urgent” action to get 1000 “low-risk” skilled agricultural machinery operators into the country by September in time for harvest. The sector’s workforce has been significantly depleted since the COVID-19 pandemic, with European and American operators who would normally chase the seasons, working the Australian harvest following the northern hemisphere harvest, unable to get in. “Australia is famed for leading the world in broadacre technology and clean and green production,” Mr Fels said. “These workers — from arable broadacre farming areas — want to come and have a taste, and we’re saying, ‘you can’t come in’. “There’s a brick wall around the country and it’s there for a reason — the last thing we want to do is bring COVID-19 into regional WA. But we’re just saying...let’s adopt a risk-based approach and allow the experienced workers we so desperately need in. “We have the same aims (as the Government) — we want to stay safe and keep the economy going.” Mr Fels said WA growers had been working overtime and the upcoming harvest — which was anticipated to hit 20 million tonnes off the back of widespread summer and autumn rainfall — would only ramp up pressure on farmers further. “We’ve been brought to our knees,” he said. “Fatigue and burnout amongst the existing broadacre workforce is now a major issue, with very few breaks or weekends being taken by the owners and workers who are working hard to keep the grains sector functioning.” With harvest set to begin in October, and workers needing to be in the State by August or September, he called the to and fro between the State and Federal Government on the issue “pathetic” and said they needed to stop “dilly dallying” and make a decision. “Let’s get the military in...and run a temporary quarantine facility that can cater for 250 people at a time in four cohorts of two weeks each, which would make it eight weeks to get 1000 through,” he said. “That would be a walk in the park for the army. I’m sure there’s the capacity, they’d have 250 tents sitting in a shed somewhere.” He suggested one of CBH Group’s old grain receival centres which had been decommissioned as part of a staggered shutdown in recent years could provide a location for the proposition. WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the only exceptions for bringing overseas workers into Australia were the Seasonal Worker Program and Pacific Island Scheme and the State Government could not start it’s own program to get header drivers in. “We need to be clear that the Federal Government has set the priority for entry as repatriating Australians,” she said. “The State Government cannot unilaterally start a separate overseas worker programme. “Unlike last year, we now have access to New Zealand and interstate workers, and we know these have been a good source of labour in the past.” She said they continued to train locals up to operate the machines, running short courses for header operators through Muresk and TAFE using “state-of-the-art simulators”. Mr Fels will be voicing his concerns at an upcoming skills summit on Wednesday, a State Government-run event which he claimed had not included the advocacy group on its initial invite list.