The week’s top media stories
Every week, AUSVEG rounds up the top stories on issues affecting the Australian vegetable industry. Here are this week’s most important news items:
- MPs back proposal to give refugees residency for fruit picking (Sydney Morning Herald)
- Would you backpack and pick fruit in your own state? (ABC Radio National)
- ‘There’s no human rights here’: Inside the Government’s ‘exploitative’ backpacker visa scheme (ABC News)
- The last thing Australia needs is ‘paying people who can work but won’t’ (Sky News Australia)
- WA Tourism Council calls for extension to backpacker visas as worker shortage bites hard (7NEWS.com.au)
- Early indications show Tasmanians shun the call to work on farms (ABC News)
- Airline workers to replace backpackers during grain harvest (2GB)
- Tourism industry asks for all remaining backpackers to have their visas extended by 12 months (The Australian) – subscription required
- Farmers want Jobseeker recipients for fruit harvest (ABC AM)
- Hort exports to China focus of traceability project (Stock & Land)
- Would you work on a farm if it reduced your HECS debt? (ABC News)
- Orchardist takes ‘drastic measures’, pulls out apple trees amid labour shortages (ABC News)
- Woolies pays organic growers $1m to lift organic produce output (Farm Online)
- Agricultural sector bracing for picking season as 6000 workers locked out of Tasmania (The Courier-Mail) – subscription required