Job snobs: Aussie dole bludgers too lazy to pick up $250 a day picking fruit
YOUNG, jobless Aussies are lazy and unwilling to break their welfare dependence, according to leading wine producers and citrus growers who are becoming ever more reliant on backpackers to stay in operation.
Despite an urgent need for unskilled workers, regional Australia is struggling to attract young people from the city despite youth unemployment in Western Sydney peaking at 17 per cent, forcing growers in the nation’s food bowls to look overseas.
Wine growers in the Hunter Valley who still rely heavily on fruit pickers, claim there has been no interest from unemployed youth in Sydney to earn easy cash — up to $250 a day — picking grapes, as the region prepares for today’s official start of the 2015 harvest.
So it is backpackers or bust, with several operators claiming without the injection of foreign workers, many wine producers in the Hunter Valley would cease to exist.
‘‘We would probably be stuffed without them. The problem is, our unemployed don’t have to work, it’s too easy for them, plus a lot of them come with baggage; real problems,’’ winemaker and former chairman of the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association’s viticulture committee Ken Bray said.
‘‘They are too reliant on welfare and don’t want to go where the jobs are.’’
While most of Drayton Wines grapes are picked by a mechanical harvester, manager John Drayton said the winery still uses backpackers to pick from older vines.
He, like Andrew Pengilly from Tyrrells Wines, rarely gets interest from locals or those struggling to find work two hours away in Sydney.
‘‘Should unemployed youth be coming up here to pick? Well, I’m a bit old school. Yes of course. A lot of people are saying that up here,’’ Mr Drayton said.
‘‘But that is the feeling about the whole society. People are unwilling to work.”
Across the state’s Riverina, the food bowl of NSW, the need for unskilled workers continues undiminished, despite it qualifying for the Howard government initiative to give foreigners an extension to their working visa if they work three months in rural Australia.
While the need for workers grows, the appeal for unemployed city residents appears non-existent.
‘‘There are definitely a lot of opportunities in rural Australia, but it seems people think the change would be too stressful.
“We don’t have fast food joints open 24 hours a day, or big shopping centres,’’ Griffith orange grower Vito Mancini said.
‘‘Just come out for a month, try it out. Don’t say there is no work about, because there is plenty.’’
Fellow Griffith farmer David Dissegna said: ‘‘The unemployed don’t want to do this kind of work. We would be in dire straits without foreign workers.’’
Fruit growers are not the only business owners lobbying the government to relax 417 visa restrictions, ahead of the tabling of the Northern Australia Development whitepaper next month.
In regional Queensland backpackers are keeping towns afloat.
‘‘We’ll give a job to anyone who’ll pull on a pair of work boots and have a go,’’ McKinley roadhouse owner Aidan Day, 65, said.
The number of working holiday visas has grown by a third since 2008 and visas for 18-to-30-year-olds are being fast-tracked to 48 hours.
BACKPACKERS UP FOR HARD WORK IN OZ
IN Germany Denny Spaeth sits behind a desk working in a car manufacturing plant, but in Australia he is a man of the land, driving a forklift and heaving pumpkins out of the ground.
Mr Spaeth and girlfriend Jennifer Herde, a kindergarten teacher, are among the flood of European backpackers who earn travelling money working as fruitpickers. They are not afraid of a hard day’s work.
The couple arrived in Australia in August and worked for two months in Ayr, near Townsville, picking pumpkins, watermelons and squash. Mr Spaeth was able to earn $23 an hour driving a forklift.
The couple will spend the next month pricking grapes in the Hunter Valley. Mr Spaeth said they had loved their time Down Under and working on farms was hard but satisfying work.
“It’s life experience. You learn a lot about yourself and it would not be bad for young people,” he said.
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