Allow fruit pickers to earn an income without any income taxes. Just work picking fruit and take away the money you earn. Allow those on income support to also earn money without income earned from picking affecting their Newstart, Allowances or Pensions.

If this was done people from all over the place would voluntarily go to farms to pick fruit. They'd do this knowing if they earned a hundred dollars from picking they would keep it. This is opposed to the current situation where at best maybe you keep 75% of what you earn. If you are on Newstart Allowancd you will be lucky to 25% of what you earn.

Great disinsentives there.

We could have a special hourly rate for african migrants (board and lodging included) and grant citizenship conditional on a few years of work placement on farms

Craig66 said..
I went fruit picking when I was a young kid, worked for free, nothing better than being out in the sun shine and fresh air plus great exercise when the owner of the tree chased me and my mates down the road with her walking stick. made me drop all my mangos

Gotta give it to you Craig. You always manage to put a reality perspective into any discussion you join.

A good idea would be to pay people minimum wage as every other buisiness has too.
Another good idea would be too stop propping up 457 and paying travellers cash and actually pay a wage to Australians.
No one can afford to work for $1 a box of grapes or 300 bucks a weeks to pick 6 tonnes of grapes...........

I picked grapes as a grommet, pay was terrible , conditions were even worse. It's slave labour at best on a lot of farms........Free food and board for 40 hours a week work Hahahaha........

People suggest use migrants to pick fruit,,,,, if we have to import people to pick our fruit we have some pretty big problems with our labour laws.

If we are importing people who have no skills and do not work or have the skills to contribute to society than why did we open the gates?

Got mates who are farmers yes it can be tough ,, and there is no thankyou but when you take 4 tonne of passion fruit to market and get 50c a piece for them it's a shed load of dollars.

Oranges are $6 a kilo in the shop that's two to three oranges in some cases, the farmers get generally half of that $2-3 a kilo ,,, not enough money you say?? Too hard, than don't grow oranges.

If you want to make it as a farmer you can't rely on society to pick your fruit for free cause it's hard....

Diversify and pay people a proper wage or get out like every other buisiness owner has too.

High yield /dollarcrops below,

vanilla beans $5 for two in a container.
kiwi berries $6 for a 200 gram tub that's $30 a kilo same as scotch fillet...
passionfruit 50c each
advocado $5 for one most of the time and $4 if your lucky

One full sized advocado can produce in excess of 1000 advocados in a season , if you have 1000 trees that is a multi million dollar turn over not my problem you decided to grow watermelon and now have to pay people to pick them..

Devinder KhunKhun is a hard working chum of mine and owner of 4 well established large Blueberry farms here in coffs , reckons most Aussies are too lazy to pick and do a bunker soon after employment.
Trying to find the owner of a blueberry farm is most difficult considering the diverse array of nationalities roaming and usually the boss is in their boots an all as well .
Health authorities last year went through the industry and made every farm get a dumpster as people were literally making stool anywhere possible then continue picking , no joke - wash those berries

Devinder sounds like a racist who doesn't like paying minimum wage or providing toilets for his workers.
Sounds like a cool place to work

SandS said..
conscript year nine and ten students and their teachers ,on a roster to pick our food .

Better still, make all those 19 year olds that 'can't get a job' because everything is beneath them get off their lazy arses and start picking.

stoff said..
I grow fresh produce and pay people properly with all their entitlements. Have crew lining up to get a job...

but the Devinders of the world are the ones I have to compete against. It is so far from a level playing field but the major supermarkets turn a blind eye so they can keep buying their cheap produce.
Fortunately im not forced to sell to them (yet) because there are still enough independents and people willing to pay for higher quality food.

Even all the devinders out there are at the mercy of COSTA farms .
Would luv to check out your farm one day stoff , and other seabreeze farmers ( if any? )
Thank god for IGA's and F&Veg wholesalers
In regards to quality It's good to know even the giants are implementing IPM ( prob because of costs and pesticide resistance ) but it's a win for consumers- all they need to do now is reintroduce flavour

Here's a generalization.

Farmers are forever whining about things that stop them from making more profit. Not that long ago we had the grizzle about live transport. Now it would appear to be lack of cheap labour.

I imagine that one of the reasons they are having a hard time in the fruit and vegetable industry is because of competition from foreign imports. Like China. Where you pay for permission to come to work.

Which will teach the conservative rural community a lesson. Don't buy the sh1te politicians tell you.

Particularly when it comes to money.

PS We have failed to teach most year 9 and 10 s to calculate, read, write and draw. So we may as well have a go at teaching food production.

dmitri said..
Free market capitalism should pick the fruits/veggies.

The idea of conscripted students and teachers is very socialist, very Soviet..

I was "forced" to do that in my year 9, 10 and first college year..
It was fun though, good memories.

So , you enjoyed it . good memories !! I rest my case !! You more than likely learnt some stuff, because in order to learn, the learner should be having some enjoyment.

SandS said..I think teaching the year 9 and 10 s about food growing and production would benefit the nation more than trying to convert already lazy 19 yo .

I think Chris' post refers to the 19y/o 'poor nursing student' on the front of the WA paper two days ago - can't get a job, applied for 40 in 4 weeks.

Plenty of flak for her over here...

In Gero, we have a tyre retailer advertising for weeks on radio- so tens of thousands of dollars in ads- to find a tyre fitter.
that's crazy. In the early 1990's as a uni student my friends and I could not find a job unless daddy knew somebody or it was a **** job with **** pay and even then it took a year of trying.

Stick needles in it
Slows demand, bit difficult with Blue Berry's though

We'd have a shidt customer service in hospitality if we had dole bludgers instead of nice mannered European staff, dole bludgers don't want to work full stop, the rules are piss weak making them work,
as for the military I wouldn't want someone alongside
me who didn't want to dig in when things got fruity , ask most employers good staff are hard to find
As a skilled migrant I was entitled to nothing
for 2 years family included, no work , no money we were going home, I stepped out of Perth airport with a missus n 2 kids and didn't know to go left or right
within a few weeks we were working, rented a place , kids loving school etc, we've been successful over here through a work hard ethic and employ 8 great staff, being a lazy
carmt is a personal preference

hilly said..

cisco said..
Ban the backpackers working at all, not just the second year visa crap in the country areas, but also in the pubs, clubs and restaurants and where ever else in the big cities.

417 visa holders back to where they came from. Require the doleys go to where the work is with subsisised accommodation if necessary and run like a boot camp. Shape up or ship out with no dough or join the military if you are good enough.

They have lowered the bar so much lately that just about anybody can get in. Discipline is what is needed in big doses.

Does this sound a bit Clive Palmerish? I would not trust the fat prick as far as I could kick him but he has come out with some very populist ideas.

It is the schools fault they should teach discipline and manners.

"It is the schools fault they should teach discipline and manners."

exactly , and how food grows and gets harvested !!!