Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme is a guest worker program that allows Australian businesses to hire temporary workers from nine Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste. The scheme allows participating workers to work in seasonal agricultural jobs for up to 9 months, or in longer-term jobs for between 1 and 4 years. The scheme was launched as the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme in 2008 and initially only permitted employment in Australia's agricultural sector, but has since expanded to other industries, including meat processing and aged care.

As of August 2024 over 30,000 workers were employed through the scheme, with about 90% employed in agriculture and meat processing. The Australian government has described the PALM scheme as a "triple win" that addresses labour shortages in Australia, provides well-paid employment to participating workers, and provides skill development and remittances to developing Pacific island nations. But the scheme has been criticised for facilitating exploitation of workers and for its rate of deaths and injuries. In a 2024 report, the New South Wales Anti-Slavery Commissioner highlighted poor working conditions and practices of modern slavery facilitated by the scheme. The scheme has also been criticised for facilitating brain drain from Pacific island nations and for providing limited benefits to Pacific workers.

History

The predecessor of the PALM scheme, the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme, began in 2008 as a pilot program to bring unskilled and low-skilled workers from Pacific island countries to work in the Australian agricultural sector. The pilot program initially had low take-up from workers, which was attributed to a lack of awareness among employers and a lack of demand for additional agricultural labour due to an existing supply of backpackers employed in the sector on working holiday visas and widespread illegal employment in the sector. But a final evaluation report gave a largely positive assessment of the pilot scheme, finding that despite its limited uptake, it had provided benefits to participants and had helped Australian agricultural employers to meet their demand for labour.

In December 2011, the government announced its intention to launch a permanent version of the scheme, the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP). The SWP was similar to the pilot scheme in most respects, but three new sectors — aquaculture, cotton and cane — were added, and the cap on the number of workers was expanded to 12,000 over a four year period. In 2018, the Australian government launched the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS), which allowed for longer-term employment than the seasonal agricultural work permitted under the SWP. In April 2022, the SWP and PLS were consolidated into the PALM scheme.

The number of PALM workers in Australia grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many other populations of temporary workers were barred from entry to the country. The number of participants grew from about 6,000 in 2019 to almost 35,000 at the beginning of 2024. But participation in the scheme fell by 24% between July 2023 and July 2024, in large part due to the return of other populations of temporary workers. The decline has also been attributed to a set of 2024 reforms that required PALM scheme workers to be offered at least 30 hours of work per week, with agricultural employers arguing that this rule was overly onerous given fluctuations in their operations. The National Federation of Farmers has argued that these changes to visa rules have made it harder for agricultural employers to participate in the scheme. In the lead up to the 2025 Australian federal election, the Coalition indicated that it was likely to roll back these minimum working hour reforms if elected.

Operation

Workers from 10 countries are eligible for the PALM scheme — Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Participants in the short-term stream can work in seasonal agricultural jobs for up to 9 months, while participants in the long-term stream can work in Australia for between 1 and 4 years. As of August 2024, there were 30,805 PALM scheme workers in Australia, one third of whom were living in Queensland. 52% were working in farming, 39% were working in meat processing and 6% were working in accommodation and care. PALM scheme workers make up 10% of Australia's agricultural workforce and 23% of its meat-packing workforce. The scheme has 494 participating employers, of which 102 are labour hire companies.

Many workers from Pacific island countries are able to earn far more in Australia through participation in the PALM scheme than they would be able to earn in their home countries and often send remittances home to their families. Long-term PALM scheme workers earned an average of $40,836 in 2020 and saved or remitted 39% of their income. PALM scheme workers sent home a total of $184 million between 2018 and 2022, while Australian employers earned $289 million in direct profit from PALM workers. Some Pacific island countries are highly reliant on these remittances; in 2022, Samoa ranked second in the world for remittances as a percentage of GDP at 34%.

The Australian government has labelled the program a "triple win" that benefits Pacific island nations, participating workers, and Australian businesses. Despite its beginnings as an agricultural labour scheme, the PALM scheme has been progressively expanded into new sectors beyond agriculture since its introduction, including meat processing, aged care, hospitality and retail.

Beginning in 2023, concerns began to be raised that PALM workers were taking advantage of a backlog in asylum applications by absconding from their employers and lodging asylum applications that would allow them to live and work in Australia for several years on bridging visas until their applications were decided. In the 2023–2024 financial year, asylum applications from the approximately 30,000 PALM workers in Australia reached 244 per month, or a rate of about 3000 per year. Professor Stephen Howes of the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University has labelled many of these applications "bogus", pointing out that asylum applications from PALM countries, with the exception of Papua New Guinea, are almost never granted.

Debate

The PALM scheme has been criticised for tying participating workers to a single sponsoring employer, with limited ability to switch to a new employer. Scholars and advocates have argued that this inability to change employers enables exploitation and makes it more difficult for workers to speak up about wage theft and poor working conditions. As of April 2025, 7000 PALM scheme workers had absconded from their employers over the preceding five years. Concerns regarding worker exploitation have been present since the earliest days of the scheme; the Australian Institute of Criminology published research into the potential for worker exploitation in the pilot scheme in 2011. A 2024 report from the New South Wales Anti-Slavery Commissioner highlighted modern slavery risks associated with the PALM scheme. A number of PALM scheme employers have also been investigated or fined for underpaying or exploiting workers.

The scheme has also been criticised for providing workers with less access to government programs and benefits than Australian residents. The Australia Institute has argued that PALM workers are often taxed at a higher rate than Australian residents and have limited access to their superannuation savings. Some workers have been overcharged by their employers for services like accommodation and transport, and many have deductions made from their pay to cover the cost of their flights to Australia. PALM workers do not have access to Medicare and must generally take out private health insurance, and also face high remittance costs. President of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta criticised the overcharging of Timorese workers for accommodation and transport by PALM scheme employers in an October 2024 speech, saying that the PALM scheme has a positive effect on the Timorese economy, but that it is exploitative in its current form.

Pacific island leaders have also expressed concerns that the benefits of the PALM scheme for Pacific island nations and workers are exaggerated. PALM workers in Australia make up 9% of the Tongan working age population, 5% of the working age population of Vanuatu, and 3% of the working age population of Samoa. This has led Pacific leaders to express concerns about brain drain and the effects of the PALM scheme on their domestic economies. Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu have all commenced reviews of their participation in offshore labour mobility schemes as a result of these concerns. The scheme has also been criticised for creating social problems in Pacific countries, including the phenomenon of families being abandoned by spouses living in Australia. In response to these concerns, the Australian government launched a pilot program in 2023 that would allow some PALM scheme workers to bring their families with them to Australia.

The scheme has also received criticism for its rate of worker deaths and injuries. 29 PALM scheme participants died in the 2022–23 financial year and 233 critical incidents involving injuries to PALM scheme workers were recorded between 2020 and 2023. Between 2021 and 2023, between 10 and 14 participants died in boating and car accidents, 17 died due to medical conditions, and the cause of 17 additional deaths remained under investigation as of December 2023. The rate of deaths among PALM scheme workers has been described as "staggering" by Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary of the Australian Department of Immigration. In August 2024, representatives of the Fijian government announced plans to visit Australia to investigate working conditions after a Fijian woman died of a brain tumour while working at an Australian abattoir, with some former coworkers alleging that workers had faced restrictions around sick leave and access to healthcare. Researchers and physicians have also reported that women participating in the PALM scheme who become pregnant often seek abortions in order to remain in Australia and avoid breaching their visa conditions.

References

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Business in Australia
Australian migration law