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Western Australian farmers warn that a multibillion-dollar harvest is at risk due to Federal Government visa approval delays, leaving them unable to secure essential machinery operators and temporary workers for the upcoming season.
An army of workers arrive to help on the land every year but farmers say they are now being blocked or delayed in a bureaucratic nightmare.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app:“Farmers are distressed trying to work out who’s going to operate all their big machinery this year,” farmer Mic Fels told 7NEWS. The Esperance farmer says the Federal Government’s decision to slow down approvals is another blow to the industry.
“We have three Danish skilled farm workers, they’ve got university qualifications, they’ve got years of experience operating exactly the same machines that we own,” he said. Harvest has made an earlier than expected start in WA, and grain farmers are eyeing off a crop of 23 million tonnes. There are fears a bumper multibillion-dollar harvest in WA is at risk because of a new crackdown on backpacker and temporary visas.
A visa approval which used to be just days or even minutes can now take up to three months.
“Farmers have had to deal with a lot this year. “There’s been the risk over whether there was going to be fertiliser, whether there was going to be diesel. “We got through that, but the uncertainty is the big cause of stress, and now it’s the uncertainty over workforce. ”National Farmers Federation vice president John Hassell said working holidaymakers “stay in accommodations on farms” and “don’t put pressure on all those sorts of things”.
Western Australia Farmers Visa Delays Harvest Agriculture
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