• The agriculture sector is being offered a 50% hotel quarantine subsidy in a bid to get overseas farm workers back into the country.
• The sector reported crop losses have totalled $52 million in the past five months.
• The announcement comes as 36,000 Australians who want to return home are still stranded due to inbound flight caps.
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NSW farmers and businesses will get a 50% subsidy to cover worker hotel quarantine for overseas workers from the NSW government in a bid to remedy the agriculture sector’s desperate labour shortage, resulting in national crop losses worth more than $52 million.

The agricultural workers targeted are not part of the state’s 3,000 person per week arrivals flight cap, which continues to lock Australians out of the country, with more than 36,000 people currently registered as being overseas and wanting to return.

The NSW government said it wants the subsidy to encourage overseas workers to fill the around 26,000 jobs professional services firm EY believes are open nationally in the horticulture industry.

NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said the subsidy would not extend to any other industries.

“The agricultural sector will be the only sector that receives a subsidy for 50% of that quarantine cost,” Marshall said.

Adding to the strain placed on the industry by droughts, bushfires and floods, Australian farmers have been forced to let produce rot without its usual workforce of backpackers to support the seasonal workforce.

And while the government has attempted to fill the gaps with local workers — it offered Australians up to $6,000 to cover relocation and travel expenses to cover jobs like picking fruit over the summer, few took up the offer.

The Agriculture Minister said the decision reflects the urgent need to protect against any further crop losses.

“These industries are crucial not just to our economy but meeting the food task of Australia and the world,” Marshall said in a statement.

“It is an issue which industry has grappled with every year for decades now, but it’s particularly been highlighted by COVID-19 and the sheer difficulties of getting overseas workers in,” he said.

And while he acknowledged the subsidy would not solve all growers’ problems; it will still be difficult for visas to be approved and for them to get into the country, he believed the subsidy was necessary to get enough workers to meet demand.

“Hopefully halving the cost might incentivise people to find those overseas workers if cost was the barrier, but we will continue to offer this 50 per cent subsidy as long as is required,” he said.

Another group granted entry before Australians stranded overseas

The decision marks yet another group able to sidestep the government’s strict inbound flight quotas, with Australian states and territories still only accepting a total of 6,685 arrivals weekly.

The plight of Australians overseas has been an ongoing saga, with limited repatriation flights proving inadequate for the number of Australians seeking to return home, and cashing out for a business class upgrade one of the few paths to clinch a return flight.

In response to the government’s ongoing restrictions on inbound flights into the country, a group of Australians who say they have been left “stranded” since the pandemic trapped them overseas filed a complaint on Monday with the UN, claiming the government “has arbitrarily breached their right to return to the land of their birth or citizenship”

Nearly 500,000 Australians have returned to the country since the beginning of the pandemic but there are still more than 36,000 Australians who remain overseas due to arrival caps.

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