A LACK of incentive to take up harvesting jobs – in comparison to getting money from JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments – would limit the effectiveness of agriculture wage subsidies, according to a senior Riverland citrus figure.
The Federal Government earlier this month announced eligible JobSeeker and Youth Allowance recipients could earn $300 a fortnight from agricultural work without affecting welfare payments, in an effort to minimise an expected labour shortage caused by COVID-19 travel restrictions.
However, Nippy’s joint managing director Jeff Knispel predicted subsidy payments aimed at directing new workers towards harvesting would suffer from a lack of interested locals.
“That opportunity for the subsidy can’t be taken up because I’m not looking at five locals in the front office, I’m only looking at internationals,” Mr Knispel said
“The locals don’t even present. They’re not here for me to make that decision, so the reward for employing a local will rarely be taken up.
“They’ve missed the target and seem to be in denial of what the real problem is. If you pay people to stay home, they will.”
Mr Knispel said increased JobSeeker payments – plus the JobKeeper program – were allowing young and unemployed Australians to decline agricultural jobs.
“Unless you’re desperate for money, you would avoid it,” He said.
“It seems like when our Australian youth are fronted with the choice of sitting at home on welfare, or going to attempt to earn more money… they choose the former.
“The way to motivate them would be to suggest they either remain at school and get educated, go into any job that’s available, or you sign up for one of the three armed services.
“One thing’s for sure, they wouldn’t be sitting on the couch getting hundreds of dollars a week.”
Member for Barker Tony Pasin said he had found “more than 1000” available jobs in the electorate area.
“Over the past couple of months I’ve spoken to employers who are crying out for staff to fill positions and they say they are just not getting the job applications,” Mr Pasin said.
“I’m not talking necessarily about seasonal work. I’m not talking about fruit picking, although these are certainly available too.
“A lot of the jobs I’m hearing about are full-time, well-paid, on-going jobs with promising career paths in interesting industries.
“I’ve collated a schedule of more than 1000 jobs available right now in my electorate alone; over half of these are full-time across a range of industries including heath care, hospitality, engineering and construction, agriculture and food processing.”
Mr Pasin said regional businesses hiring new employees would help drive South Australia’s recovery from COVID-19.
“While nationally the unemployment rate rose during the peak of the COVID pandemic, the assertion that there are no job opportunities is just plain wrong,” he said.
“I’m living in regional SA and I’m hearing directly from employers and they are telling me they have the jobs and they need people to fill them.
“We have a strong focus on a business-led economic recovery and given this, it’s devastating to hear that businesses in my electorate are struggling to find staff.”
Mr Knispel said worker shortages had already impacted Nippy’s juice products and export capacity.
“We’re falling short on export orders and, for our juice business, we’re having to import product to so we can add that to a percentage of fresh,” he said.
“We’re having to compromise the quality of our fruit juice (and) in the packing shed we’re not filling orders that are there to be processed.
“The reports back from growers who send us fruit are saying they are experiencing the same thing. Those harvest contract companies are having trouble getting numbers.
“It’s a result of the national figure I’ve heard that instead of having 130,000 or 140,000 internationals, we’re down to about 70,000 or 80,000.”