Asimel Bongmegal has been working on a sweet potato farm in regional Queensland for the past six months to give his family in Vanuatu a better life.
"The land that I just bought [in Vanuatu], I put it aside — that's for my son and daughter," he said.
"I come in, work myself and help the family back home … it is a life-changing opportunity for me."
Mr Bongmegal is one of more than 25,000 seasonal workers who are helping to address critical labour shortages in Australia, under the federal government's Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.
About 10,000 more workers are expected to come from the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste by June 2023.
But there is an urgent need to better support this growing workforce through Pacific-led services, according to a report from Griffith University.
Lead researcher Kaya Barry said it was "a big cultural shift" for the workers.
"There's not a lot of social or cultural awareness of what people might need when they're going to be away from their family for nine months built into the program currently," Dr Barry said.
Pacific community groups and people involved with seasonal workers have voiced their support for cultural training and awareness workshops for those hosting and employing PALM workers — a key recommendation of the report.
The findings are based on a three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council, which collected data from the Wide Bay Burnett and North Tropical Queensland regions.
In response, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has launched the PALM Cultural Framework to strengthen cultural awareness in the scheme and assist employers to connect with workers.
A spokesperson for the department said a series of cultural awareness sessions on Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Timor-Leste and First Nations began last month and were led by country liaison officers.
'Beyond a regular tourist hostel'
Farmgate Backpackers director Bill Darby acts as a go-between for migrant workers and farmers in the Bundaberg area — the region that supplies up to a quarter of Australia's fruit and vegetables, depending on the time of the year.
He said COVID-19 labour shortages had prompted many horticultural businesses to shift from hiring almost exclusively European backpackers to taking on more Indo-Pacific workers.
"The productivity with seasonal worker groups has been something that's been very attractive to employers," he said.
"But we could do with more support from agencies to help manage their welfare because there is such a cultural gap."
Dr Barry said the same problem was raised in her interviews with other worker accommodation providers, who played a critical role in looking after the needs of migrants during their nine-month stay.
"[Pacific seasonal workers] are at a different life stage, and they have different kinds of family and community commitments," she said.
"So I think for the hostels who dealt quite happily with the young, youthful weekend parties of backpackers, this was a bit of an adjustment."
For example, several of Dr Barry's interviewees had sought out local churches to visit their accommodation on a regular basis for services, pastoral care, and in-language events.
"The hostels facilitate the employment for people, so they might have an on-site labour hire service, or they might just connect people with farmers who need things," she said.
"They often provide the transportation … [and] for the hostels that are a bit further out of town, they do the weekly supermarket runs, they take them to the doctors … they do all this extra stuff that goes beyond a regular tourist hostel."
Pacific consultation needed
Mr Bongmegal oversees a Bundaberg team of Ni-Vanuatu workers who carefully pick the vines off matured sweet potatoes and replant them to yield more crops.
"I tell them, if you know how to take care of kids, you know how to take care of crops," he said.
Mr Bongmegal said consistent, direct communication between seasonal workers, accommodation providers, and labour hire services was important.
He said some seasonal workers were hesitant or fearful about voicing their needs and it sometimes led to misunderstandings with employers.
"One worker told me 'I'm very sick, but [my employer] did not even come to see me'," Mr Bongmegal said.
"So I told [the accommodation provider] and they immediately got him to see a doctor."
The president of the Bundaberg Fijian Incorporation, Moe Turaga, said he welcomed labour and accommodation providers approaching community groups for information on culturally appropriate activities.
But he said there was an over-reliance on informal grassroots support, and Pacific-led services needed to be integrated into the government scheme.
"The model that we have now is still wrong," he said.
"Even though we have a facility with a few islanders in there, their role is very much administrative, and it's not really touching the people on the ground who we have around the country."
Farmgate's Mr Darby said his business had developed close ties with churches and rugby league clubs in the Wide Bay Burnett region to provide more social engagement activities for seasonal workers.
"[Indo-Pacific workers] are visitors to our country … and we need to make sure that they enjoy the experience and have a positive one," he said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said partner country cultural toolkits for PALM participants were being developed throughout 2023.
"The Australian government is committed to improving conditions for PALM scheme workers including protecting the welfare of workers, and better pay and conditions," the spokesperson said.
Sowing seeds for the future
Mr Turaga said the lack of integrated support from government agencies became especially problematic when a seasonal worker faced a problem with an employer or accommodation provider.
"There's a dependency on local diasporas [from different Pacific islands] to come in and help workers in emergency situations," he said.
"It should just be a really simple framework where, if a worker gets stuck, there's an emergency patch they can go to.
"Instead, it's just a hell of a lot of convoluted stuff that communities actually have to do on the ground in regard to wellbeing support — and also physical [health] and financial support."
Seasonal workers on the PALM scheme are currently bound to one employer during their stay and are offered a minimum of 30 work hours per week.
But Mr Bongmegal said weather disruptions often resulted in loss of income.
He said seasonal workers would benefit from being able to work for more than one employer during these times.
"We're only here for a short time. We would like to work more hours, so we can have more money and we can help the community and family," he said.
"I reflect back to my great, great grandad … and my dad, and they never [drove] a van – it was hard for them.
"Once we came into this program, we changed a lot of lifestyles back home, which has really, really improved."
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said it had recently resumed consultations on the PALM scheme to further strengthen worker protections, including options to address minimum working hours and workers' net pay.
Dr Barry said she hoped the Griffith University report would also highlight the important role that seasonal farm workers played in Australia.
"That goes beyond just them filling jobs and the economic value we place on them," she said.
"They live alongside us, they're our neighbours, they're our teammates in sporting clubs, they're at the local shops after work, [and] we see them on weekends.
"They're a long-standing part of our communities."
