Ethel, a 43-year-old woman from the Solomon Islands. She highlights the injustices and discriminatory practices that migrant workers face on the ground while working through the new Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. She came to Australia in 2022 and spent four months working on a farm in northern Queensland. By the time she went home, she had fewer than $200 to wire back to her family. Her experience is typical of how many exploited encounters and often struggling disengaged workers dream maith challenges that workers face.
Ethel endured serious abuse by her employer during her time working on the farm. This awful experience motivated her to exit the PALM program. In the month of August, Ethel volunteered on an organic farm in Leeton, New South Wales. As a result, she was accidentally thrown from a tractor and sustained a traumatic head injury that resulted in three complicated surgeries. Since then, she’s had a difficult time wading through the bureaucracy of forms needed to apply for hardship assistance and the cost of her medications.
Like Ethel, this is not an uncommon reality. Nearly 7,000 other workers have dropped out of the PALM program, cut off from the opportunities they were promised and reporting experiences such as abuse and abandonment. Ethel has been grappling with the harsh reality of living without a visa. She represents the plight of other workers across the state who become exposed after exiting the program.
“Family at home were asking for more money and we would send but we were left with nothing and that’s why we left the PALM scheme.” – Ethel
The barriers experienced by these disconnected workers go beyond their monetary woes. Ethel’s case highlights the systemic, structural barriers that make accessing support systems nearly impossible. Although she received assistance from Welcoming Australia, a non-profit organization, her conditions reflect a systemic issue within the PALM scheme that leaves many workers without adequate resources.
Paul Maytom, a faith-rooted advocate for migrant workers, shared testimony about the hopeless conditions many workers are living through.
“The people that I’ve worked with over the last 18 months, they’re people that either don’t have enough money because they’ve got sick, or they got injured and there’s no cover.” – Paul Maytom
Ethel’s experience echoes the concerns raised by fellow migrant workers. Constantino Waowao, another precarious worker, free radicals’ Cambodia activist in his vulnerability not just in terms of economic precarity through his sexual exhibition.
“I’m gay, I will never go back, if I go back they will kill me, that’s why I’m here.” – Constantino Waowao
This reality highlights the complex issues that ongoing exploitative and abusive practices target migrant workers in Australia. Another advocate, Ken Dachi, highlighted the deeper concern of the overall implications of this disengaged labor on food production.
“A certain percentage of the food we buy every day is from the hands of disengaged workers. It’s exploited labour that’s contributed to its coming to the shelf.” – Ken Dachi
Even with the best intentions of organizations like Welcoming Australia, there are questions about sustainability and whether or not these organizations can provide long-term solutions for these workers. That’s why Dachi said we need smarter, more nimble strategies to tackle these issues.
“Goodwill is not a strategy. Is it sustainable? No, there’s donor fatigue, there’s volunteer fatigue.” – Ken Dachi
Curbed’s Justin Davidson joined that group, calling for immediate action to fix these issues.
“I think everyone can acknowledge it is a problem and we need to address it; it’s not sustainable.” – Justin Davidson
Ethel’s experience is indicative of the intersecting vulnerabilities that the migrant workforce are subjected to in Australia. She is doing so without any support from her city, state or federal government after having suffered life-altering injuries. Her experience underscores the urgent need for reform across programs supporting some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
