At Otway Blueberries, Lisa Agnew relies on 35 workers between December and April to delicately pick the small fruit from its bushes.
As immigration becomes a political football, Agnew and other farmers who spoke to the Brolga are worried that in the push to cut numbers, staff may be harder to get and fruit will be left to rot.
Of the 35 pickers, eight are Australian. Many of the rest hail from Vietnam.
What’s going on: Federal Minister for Immigration Tony Burke announced last month that the government would introduce new limits on the Working Holiday Maker visa by using a ballot system for second and third year visa applicants.
The Coalition has pledged this week to reduce net overseas migration to 100,000 and bring temporary visa holders down by 650,000 over four years.
One Nation’s migration policy focuses on “cutting immigration by over 570,000 people from current Labor levels by capping visas at 130,000 per year”.
Who gets the job? Angew prefers to hire pickers who have worked at the farm previously or been referred by previous staff. Facebook pages are also a common way to hire overseas workers.
“For any business, training is a process, and it’s costly, and you want to avoid it where possible,” she said. “If you can get repeat workers, you’re in a much better position from the start of the season.
“Obviously the previous staff will have a second year [visa], best case scenario a third year, [so] that they can come and work for me before they have to go home for good.”
Migration politics: She said the current focus on migration and changes to working visas was “incredibly short-sighted” and to cite housing shortages as the reason behind cutting migration was “utter rubbish”.
“When we’re not in season, no one’s living on our property, other than obviously us, the occupants. But when we’re in season, they’re all housed there,” Agnew said.
“We are not creating some sort of trouble for the local community. If anything, we’re creating income for Gellibrand and Colac by the fact they're going to shop in the local area.”
Not enough staff: Angew said Labor’s ballot system would affect the pool of workers available to hire.
“You've got to do the first 88 days to get into the ballot for the second year visa, and then you've got to do six months,” she said, adding that applicants may not commit to a third year visa if the number of available slots was too low.
“For us it's going to cost a lot of money, because we're going to have to start from scratch each year with trying to get new people.
“When our workers leave us, they go to another farm. That’s how the cycle works. When you mess with that cycle, all blueberry farms will be affected … you're going to end up with fruit not being picked.”
Not just fruit and veg: Crossley dairy farmers Karrinjeet Singh-Mahil and Brian Schuler, who have farmed since 1997, pointed to staffing struggles as one of the major factors behind their decision to retire.
“A vast number of dairy farms rely on overseas labour, and we're amongst them,” Singh-Mahil told the Brolga in September.
“The thing that really made our decision in the end, apart from the fact that we're getting older, is we can't get reliable staffing. Having to change backpackers every three months is really hard work.
“You have to retrain people … by the time they're up to speed, you've only got a month of good work out of them, then they're gone.”
She said neighbours also relied on overseas labour from countries like the Philippines and that “these people are not the ones taking the houses”.
“We wouldn't have gotten through calving without backpackers,” Singh-Mahil said. “Some of the backpackers we’ve had have actually become farmers.
“What pressure is it going to put on our industry … if the government keeps up with this nonsense of slowing down processing of working holiday visas, or reducing the number of migrants coming into Australia?”