The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme is helping some workers but harming others – it needs to be reformed

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme has been promoted by both Labor and Coalition governments as a mutually beneficial migration arrangement between Australia and the South Pacific. Yet, as growing evidence of abuse and exploitation comes to light, the supposed “win-win” of Pacific labour mobility appears more tenuous than ever.

Guestworker migration leaves workers vulnerable by design and delivers economic benefits weighed heavily in Australia’s favour. Granting PALM workers the right to change employers is a necessary – and urgent – first step toward reversing this trend.

The PALM scheme allows workers from nine Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste to work in Australia on a temporary basis – though with stringent restrictions on eligible industries and occupations, the duration and location of employment, and rights at and outside of work. Most notably, individual workers are tied to a single employer-sponsor and are unable to bring their families with them, even for those on the “PALM Long” stream that allows contracts of up to four years’ duration.

No other group of workers in Australia are subjected to these conditions, which are referred to in migration scholarship as “guestwork”. Guestworker schemes are designed to provide a cheap and temporary supply of migrant labour for specific industries, achieving these aims by preventing migrant workers from changing jobs and foreclosing pathways to permanent settlement. They also create susceptibility to exploitation, as workers have little choice but to accept the conditions of their employment, whether legal or not, or otherwise “disengage” and face additional risks associated with undocumented visa status.

As a proud country of immigration, Australia has historically shunned guestwork. In 2006, then-Treasurer Peter Costello declared that “Australia has never been a guestworker country. We’ve never been a country where we bring you in and ship you out … I don’t think Australians want to see that”.

Yet, only two years later, following a change of government, Australia began piloting the antecedent of today’s PALM scheme, justifying this change of stance with the suggestion that labour mobility can promote economic benefits for the whole region. By providing Pasifika and Timorese workers access to distressed corners of rural Australia’s labour market – initially agriculture, but also meat processing and aged care, among other industries – it was reasoned that they would be able to send development-spurring income back home.

In some respects, the PALM scheme has been an economic success. It has grown significantly in recent years, from about 6,000 workers in 2019 to nearly 35,000 earlier this year, and these jobs have often generated life-altering income for migrant workers and their families. A recent survey by the World Bank indicated that some workers were able to earn up to 10 times what they could make back home.

Yet the PALM scheme is even bigger business for Australia’s economy. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have estimated that, between 2018 and 2022, employers made $289 million in direct profit from PALM workers. Those same workers were able to send home a total of $184 million, but also paid $136 million to Australian businesses for their day-to-day expenditures, spent $74 million in rent for accommodation, and were levied $70 million in taxable contributions to a welfare system they were unable to access.

These lopsided economic benefits are intimately linked to prevailing conditions of employment.

As PALM has grown, so too has evidence of exploitation and abuse – culminating in last month’s report by the NSW anti-slavery commissioner, which highlighted systemic risks throughout the scheme. The report identifies a damning list of grievances endured by PALM workers, including wage theft and forced labour practices, excessive deductions for accommodation and transport, unsafe working and living conditions, physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence, insufficient access to healthcare, and detrimental wellbeing outcomes linked to family separation. It describes a scheme that is not fit for purpose, leaving workers inherently vulnerable and allowing for profiteering that far outstrips remitted income.

Of course, not all employers are exploitative and not all workers are exploited. But the current policy design of the PALM scheme leaves such outcomes to chance.

Urgent reforms are needed to tackle the root cause of the issue: guestwork itself. Until workers are free to vote with their feet by changing employers, other much-needed rights and protections are likely to prove insufficient in preventing the further mistreatment of PALM workers and evening out the distribution of “wins”.