Australia’s Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme
initially allowed people from several Pacific nations to help Australian
farmers with their harvests. This year it has been expanded, but extending it
further to also allow Indonesian fishermen would provide a win-win solution for
a big problem
Every year hundreds of Indonesian fishermen come to
Australia’s northern waters. Of course, these are also Indonesia’s southern
waters and the fishermen were coming here before the first fleet of European
colonizers arrived. But that does not stop newspapers screaming about disease,
drugs, terrorism, people trafficking and so on.
Fisheries officers also complain, legitimately, it seems,
that this puts pressure on fish stocks.
At the same time, the Australian government spends millions
of taxpayers’ dollars unsuccessfully trying to stop the fishermen. Up-to-date
figures are hard to obtain, the most recent indication comes from 2006, when
the Commonwealth had committed $390 million to the problem.
This includes $25 million on helicopters, $66 million on
“processing centers,” and $19 million on mapping. A small part of these
expenses are incurred by apprehending the fishermen, which according to Natasha
Stacey in “Boats to Burn: Bajo Fishing Activity in the Australian Fishing Zone”
includes the cost of prosecution, caretakers for detained crews, legal aid,
jailing and repatriation. Australians are footing a $390 million bill, yet as
Stacey notes, “Current Australian policies toward Indonesian fishermen are
clearly inappropriate and ineffective.”
For Indonesian fishermen, coming down to Australia is no
picnic. Often living in poverty, without basic infrastructure, and at the mercy
of endemic diseases, many can’t afford to feed their kids properly, send them
to school, or even to a good hospital. Again, up-to-date data are hard to find,
but in 1994, after four weeks of work, the crewmen of an Indonesian fishing
boat received just over Rp 400,000 — about A$8 (in those times) for a day’s work.
Not many of us would risk life and limb on a small leaky boat for ten times
that figure. Moreover, many of these fishermen are chronically indebted, so
their take-home pay may have been significantly less. If there were better work
opportunities, the fisherman would take them, but there aren’t. So he sails
down to fish in Australian waters and risk losing his life if his leaky boat
goes down in a storm. If he is lucky he returns to Indonesia slightly better
than when he set off.
Current policies clearly aren’t working either for
Indonesian fishermen or for Australia, so what about another solution?
One simple response might help us all: just allow people
from Indonesian fishing villages to work in Australia. Currently, the
government offers “457” visas for overseas skilled workers.
However, almost
none of the fishermen have the qualifications required. The new Seasonal Worker
Pilot Scheme is a better option. This allows people from Pacific Islands to
work in the agricultural sector and the program could easily be extended to
Eastern Indonesia, where the fishermen sail from. I suggest we provide the
fishermen with similar strictly-supervised visas to do the manual and domestic
work such as laundering, cleaning, child-minding, laboring, mining or picking fruit.
This is work Australians need done, but either don’t want to do, don’t have
time to do, or can’t afford to pay for. Through this solution, Australia could
help the fishermen, and, at the same time, help itself.
For Australia, the benefits would be great. Special visas
for fishermen would help get the economy ticking again. Fishermen would prefer
to work legally in Australia so it could free up the money wasted on efforts to
keep them out. It would also reduce pressure on Australia’s protected fish stocks.
And if this resulted in Australian job losses in any one sector, then, by all
means, we should not provide visas for work in that sector.
For Indonesians on this program, working in Australia would
be far more lucrative and safer. The minimum hourly wage in Australia is
equivalent to at least several days laboring in an Indonesian village. Children
of fishermen could grow up healthier and with an education that would provide
opportunities far more appealing than sailing to Australia.
Not only the pay, but the conditions would be far better
than they could expect in Indonesia. Indonesians have assisted the economies of
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and other countries by working as
foreign laborers, but are continually underpaid and mistreated.
Australian
employers would be forced to treat Indonesian workers fairly or face the full
force of the law.
Allowing Indonesian fishermen visas to work legally is more
beneficial for Australians than trying to apprehend them in our northern
waters. Indonesian fishermen are clearly willing to work hard, so Australia
should give them a go.
Nicholas Herriman is a lecturer in anthropology at La Trobe
University in Victoria, Australia.
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