The National Farmers' Federation (NFF) and Australia's federal government have reached a short-term agreement to fast-track urgent visa requests for backpacker workers, after a slowdown in processing left farms without enough hands for harvest.

Under the deal, working holiday visa applicants who fill a genuine and urgent need for farm work, including harvest and fruit picking, can be approved more quickly. Approval is not guaranteed and remains subject to the Department of Home Affairs' assessment. The processing slowdown began in August, and limits on backpacker numbers announced last week by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had raised fears of worker shortages across regional Australia.

NFF chief executive Michael Guerin called it a "good faith deal": the farm lobby will put forward only the most urgent applications, and the government will prioritise processing them. "In the last 24 hours, we've been able to go from a standing start to a system which is in place today," he said. The NFF expects some applications to be processed within days, although neither side yet knows how many will go through each day.

Guerin said Australian agriculture relies completely on working holiday-maker visas and other overseas labour, and that producers have been unable to get crops off. Silage contractors are among those who have faced worker shortages because of the slowdown.

He welcomed the fast-tracked approvals but said the arrangement does not provide any long-term solution or address broader migration reform, since regional communities depend on overseas workers for roles that cannot be filled by Australians. The report was written by Angus Verley and Justine Longmore.

Photo: Nick Pitsas, CSIRO / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Source: ABC Rural