Is Australia putting Pacific Island guestworkers at risk of modern slavery?

This week, the Solomon Island’s capital of Honiara will host an annual meeting about labour mobility in the Pacific region. Australia is one of twelve countries that will participate, and the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme – which experts say puts participants at risk of modern slavery – is a key part of the agenda.

About 30,000 people from ten nearby countries work in Australia on PALM visas. They can only stay on a temporary basis (of up to four years) and can only work in jobs classified by the Australian Government as ‘unskilled’, ‘low skilled’ or ‘semi skilled’.

The scheme has been dogged by welfare concerns, to the point that both the Office of the NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner and the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery have expressed concerns that the PALM Scheme is putting people at risk of modern slavery.

The root of the problem is that people employed under the PALM scheme are bound to a single ‘approved employer’, who sponsors their visa. If a worker wants to leave, they have to convince their employer to let them go. Not only does the employer have to agree, they have to submit an application to the Commonwealth Government for a transfer – all whilst the visa holder is expected to put up with whatever it is that made them want to leave in the first place.

The same ‘approved employer’ that sponsors the visa is permitted to make deductions directly from the wages of the people they employ under the scheme. This is so employers can cover the upfront costs – of things like flights to Australia, visa application fees, and work gear – but the deductions can leave PALM workers with very little money to show for their hard work. The Commonwealth Government recently backed away from a commitment to ensure PALM workers are guaranteed a minimum of 30 hours work a week, which would have helped ensure they earn enough money.

On top of this, reports of PALM visa holders living in dangerous, overpriced, or overcrowded accommodation are common. It is the responsibility of employers to organise accommodation for the workers they sponsor, which means many end up living in a place owned by their boss. This can exacerbate power imbalances, and some employers restrict what workers are allowed to do in their free time.

Most PALM workers are employed to do physical work on farms and in abattoirs, where the risk of injury is relatively high, but PALM visa holders are not eligible for Medicare (outside a trial for 200 people). Instead, people in Australia on PALM visas must pay for private health insurance policies that often do not provide adequate coverage in the case of serious injury or illness. This is a particular problem for women who may fall pregnant whilst working in Australia on a PALM visa, as most health insurance policies have a 12-month waiting period for pregnancy related services. Combined with all too common reports of sexual harassment in the workplace and at accommodation sites, and female PALM visa holders are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

One thing PALM visa holders do have in common with other people working in Australia is that they are paid superannuation. Since the program offers no pathway to permanent settlement, the chances of a PALM visa holder retiring in Australia are very low, which means they need access to this money sooner rather than later. The process of getting super paid to former PALM visa holders once they return to their country of origin is difficult, and if they do succeed in navigating that process, about a third is lost in tax.

These problems – especially the wage deductions and crowded accommodation – have led thousands of people to walk away from the program, and try their luck in Australia in violation of their visa conditions. This is what has become known as ‘disengagement’. No one knows exactly how many people have ‘disengaged’, but estimates range from seven to ten thousand.

If PALM visa holders had the right to change employer – even if only within a limited pool of industries and locations – workers could vote with their feet and leave situations they find disagreeable.

Australia’s seasonal work programs with the Pacific started as a way of providing short term labour for farms during harvest season. But, since the PALM scheme was created in 2022, the number of participants has doubled, and the number of industries that employ PALM visa holders is growing. Sizable parts of the Australian economy now depend on PALM workers, and a very similar program is in the works for people from Vietnam.

Australia is a nation that has long prided itself on giving new migrants a fair go, but the increasing reliance on temporary migrants to get the job done brings Australia to a crossroads. Either the Commonwealth addresses the issues with the PALM scheme now, or Australia will face the consequences – domestic and international – of allowing the risk of modern slavery to fester.