Table of Contents
Australia has long benefited from the labour of working people from the Pacific Islands, from the Kanakas who helped build the Queensland sugar industry in the 19th century, to women today, sewing Country Road shirts for a dollar an hour in a Fiji garment factory.
Pacific workers today are international and mobile: i-Kiribati and Tuvaluan seafarers staff the global shipping trade; Samoan and Tongan labourers work in factories and building sites in Sydney and Auckland or pick fruit in Australia’s Murray Valley (often as ‘illegal’ or undocumented workers); more than 1,000 Fijians work in Iraq and Kuwait as security guards, truck drivers and labourers, while Fijian soldiers and police officers serve in peacekeeping operations around the globe. Meanwhile, Indo-Fijian and Tongan computer technicians, nurses, accountants and teachers migrate to find a better life, in the face of political turmoil and limited career opportunities in their homeland.
This movement of people has had a massive impact on the Pacific. In the colonial era, plantations of sugar in Fiji and pineapples in Hawai’i were built largely on migrant and indentured labour on alienated indigenous land. ‘Blackbirding’ in Melanesia robbed many islands of their young men between 1860 and 1900 and helped build the sugar industry in Queensland. [1]
Today, there is extensive domestic migration to Pacific towns and cities from rural areas and outlying islands. This internal population movement is often the precursor to international migration, either to other Pacific Island nations or to industrialised countries. It can also be ‘circular’ migration, with people returning to their home areas after fulfilling their desire for earnings, education or career advancement. Large numbers of people in the Pacific Islands migrate in search of the three Es: education, employment and enjoyment. Often they end up instead with the three Ds — jobs that are dirty, difficult and dangerous — and governments are left to deal with the social consequences of the three Ms: mobile men with money.
A high percentage of Polynesian and Micronesian Islanders now live overseas, especially in Pacific Rim countries such as Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Some freely associated states and territories have migration rights to their former colonial power. In smaller islands such as Niue, Cook Islands, Rotuma and Wallis and Futuna, the number of people living overseas is greater than the numbers who remain. More Cook Islanders live in New Zealand than in the Cook Islands, more American Samoans in the USA than in their home islands. The geographer Gerard Ward (1999) suggests that the Polynesian triangle needs to be extended to incorporate Los Angeles, Sydney and Auckland.
Migration has become an outlet for the population pressures evident in many island nations and remittances sent home play a vital part in the economy of countries such as Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Cook Islands, Wallis and Futuna and Fiji. In turn, there is concern in Fiji, Tonga and Micronesia about the importation of Asian labour as domestic workers, sex workers and garment industry labourers. [2]
These patterns of migration provide benefits such as the transfer of remittances, the repatriation of skills and education, the promotion of tourism and the seeding of funds for small business development (Brown and Walker 1995). However, migration also has social costs. The immigration policies of developed nations favour those with skills and high levels of education, and there is an extensive literature on the ‘brain drain’ from the Pacific as rugby players, teachers, nurses, accountants and other professionals and tradespeople move to jobs offshore that offer better pay or career advancement.
In this way, Pacific Island nations are robbed of the skilled workers who are most needed, while low or semi-skilled workers who most need jobs are left behind and remain unemployed, with limited job opportunities in the formal wage sector. Labour force and population data from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community show that the youth bulge in most island nations will mean that employment generation will become increasingly urgent in the Pacific in coming decades, and there is growing discussion about the potential to address it through greater international labour mobility. [3]
The pressing need to find jobs for Pacific Island workers coincides with the emergence of gaps in the labour force of developed nations. In countries such as Australia, lower birth rates, the ageing demographic profile, increased personal wealth, the provision of social welfare, sustained economic growth, low unemployment and higher levels of education have combined to reduce the supply of workers who are available (or willing) to undertake physically demanding labour for relatively low pay. This has opened up debate about the potential for temporary employment schemes for Pacific Islanders to work in overseas labour markets, particularly in seasonal pursuits in agriculture.
This issue of labour migration and seasonal work is on the agenda of Pacific island governments and donor agencies:
At the October 2005 meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, held in PNG, the issue of labour mobility was a key topic as Forum members discussed increasing regional integration. Pacific Island community, academic and government leaders widely express the belief that increased labour market access, especially for unskilled workers, is a central component of regional economic integration under the Pacific Plan adopted at the 2005 Forum. PNG’s Foreign Minister, Sir Rabbie Namaliu, has stated: ‘We believe that permitting increased labour mobility should be part of Australia’s and New Zealand’s commitment to implementing the Pacific Plan. It is one way to demonstrate to our leaders that they are serious about assisting island countries to develop their capacity and their economies’ (Australian Financial Review, October 26, 2005, p. 8).
At the Forum meeting, however, Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, firmly expressed his opposition to proposals to create temporary work schemes in Australia. [6] In a December 2005 statement issued to the regional media, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, reiterated government policy against temporary work schemes, stating that the ‘answer to the Pacific’s large and growing unemployment problems does not lie in a few hundred unskilled young people coming to Australia to pick fruit for a few months of the year’. [7]
In spite of Prime Minister Howard’s firm ‘no’ to seasonal work programs at the 2005 Forum leaders’ meeting, the issue is still being debated in Australia and there is continuing lobbying by business leaders and farmers’ organisations. [8] The Australian Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee began a further inquiry into Pacific Region Seasonal Labour Programs in December 2005, to examine whether a seasonal work program could meet labour shortages in rural Australia and advance the economic development of Pacific nations. [9]
As part of a wider research project conducted with the Institute for Social Research of Swinburne University, [10] this chapter will briefly discuss the role of remittances in Pacific economies and development, before outlining a proposal for a pilot program of seasonal work for Islanders in Australia’s horticulture industry. It will discuss Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program (CSAWP) as a model for seasonal work programs, but will look at a range of issues — concerning regulation, labour rights and social impacts — that would need to be addressed if seasonal work schemes were to operate without evoking memories of blackbirding.