Estimated thousands of migrant workers trapped in Australian farm slavery

A backpacker hoping for a memorable working holiday on an Australian farm finds himself crammed into a house with 17 people, eating dry bread and deprived of sunshine and fresh air.

After arriving on a visa from China, the young man had headed to a small town on the NSW coast in 2024 to pick blueberries and was immediately slapped with a rental debt.

Three or more backpackers slept in each room of the residence, where the landlord set up security cameras to watch their every move and protested when they opened the garage to encourage light and ventilation.

“No one’s daily life should be constantly monitored by someone with more resources and power,” he wrote in a submission to a NSW parliamentary inquiry examining modern rural slavery risks.

The migrant workers harvested up to 30 buckets of berries each day at $4.50 per load but despite sometimes toiling for 17 days straight, were regularly told they weren’t doing enough.

“Going to the farm each day felt like descending into a blueberry hell of prolonged suffering,” the man wrote.

While many Australians assume the days of slavery are long gone, the NSW inquiry has revealed migrant workers in industries like agriculture, horticulture and meat processing are highly vulnerable to exploitation.

It’s estimated more than 40,000 people are enslaved across the nation, subject to violence, threats, punishing hours, low pay, poor housing and restricted movements.

More than 16,000 are trapped in modern slavery in NSW, one of the few states that does not regulate the hire companies central to recruitment.

Nearly half of all people who approach the office of the NSW anti-slavery commissioner for help are temporary migrants working in rural areas, with four people asking for support each week.

“We might tend to assume slavery means shackles and chains, people physically restrained,” commissioner James Cockayne tells AAP.

“But the constraints we see now that lead to a slavery-type outcome are not physical constraints, they are structured as contracts.

“They’re employment contracts that tie people to a workplace in unjust ways, marriage contracts that people are forced into or debt contracts that are impossible to escape.”

The federal government’s Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, which employs people from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste, has been heavily scrutinised at the inquiry.

While agriculture industry bodies point to a 2023 survey showing the vast majority of PALM workers are “very satisfied”, conditions on the ground sometimes tell another story.

Visits with participants in fruit-growing districts across rural Australia uncovered dire conditions between 2022 and 2024, according to a report by Sydney’s Immigration Advice and Rights Centre.

Workers in Bundaberg, Queensland were sleeping on benches and lining up at soup kitchens.

One PALM worker had metal lodged in his eye while using a staple gun, leaving him with significant vision loss.

His employer forced him to continue lifting heavy bags of fruit against medical advice and didn’t apply for another visa on his behalf after the injury.

The legal centre successfully sought ministerial intervention and the Samoan man was granted permanent residency in 2023.

Others in the scheme have fled their employers and are living in tents in the NSW Riverina, while support services have noticed a spike in female workers reporting sexual exploitation.

Part of what makes participants so vulnerable is the inability to change employers under their visa conditions, the inquiry has been told.

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations can intervene, though it usually requires documented evidence of exploitation.

The federal government has made several reforms to strengthen PALM, including pay parity, minimum hour rules and extra resourcing for the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The national workplace relations system is in force regardless of a worker’s immigration status, an inquiry submission from several federal agencies said.

“Therefore, under workplace laws ... no worker should be subject to any form of labour exploitation, including the more egregious forms that could risk becoming modern slavery practices.”

There have been 228 investigations of PALM-approved employers since mid-2019, resulting in $762,625 in recovered wages for 1937 workers, according to the ombudsman.

The changes to PALM are a good start but worker mobility should be the top future priority, Dr Cockayne says.

“We know from experiences overseas that tied visas - where workers are made entirely dependent on the discretion of their employer - are the number one correlate of vulnerability to modern slavery.”

Moe Turaga came to Australia from Fiji as a teenager to work on a farm in Victoria, pruning vines and harvesting crops.

He and nine others had their passports taken, lived in a spartan shack and were told they had to pay off their travel expenses.

“I was often cold and hungry and when I got injured ... I did not get medical care,” Mr Turaga says.

“Things were really tough but I was focused on helping my family.”

It wasn’t until two years into the job Mr Turaga was able to call his mother, who asked when he would start sending money home.

None of his earnings had been passed on by his boss, as promised.

After escaping with the help of locals, Mr Turaga made a home in Australia and is now an advocate for others.

Most workers who come from the Pacific have a good experience but rogue employers and labour hire companies have exploited many in the PALM scheme, he says.

“So much of the fruit, vegetables and meat you have in your fridge is (processed) by PALM workers,” he adds.

“The Australian economy relies on migrant workers - and the government should be doing more to protect us.”

The inquiry is due to hold a hearing at Griffith in the Riverina on June 19.