PALM scheme exploitation revealed in NSW parliamentary inquiry

As reported by the ABC, Ezekiel Nita from Papua New Guinea revealed that he’d travelled to Tasmania on the PALM scheme and had his pay inexplicably docked by $1,100, leaving him with $300. Now based in Coffs Harbour, Nita gave evidence in the NSW parliamentary inquiry into modern slavery in the second week of December. Coffs Harbour has been at the centre of hundreds of complaints of worker exploitation, not least by questionable labour hire companies. Legal Aid NSW senior solicitor James Blaxland told the inquiry that a lack of regulation meant that taking legal action against labour hire firms in New South Wales was difficult.

“We’ve seen examples of a labour hire company whose registered address is a backpacker hostel, and their director is based overseas,” he said.

Laurie Berg is an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney Law Faculty and Director of the Migrant Justice Institute. She co-authored a report on the issue with Co-Executive Director of Migrant Justice Institute, Bassina Farbenblum.

She says, “The program is a cornerstone of Australia’s strategic engagement in the region and is a ‘long-term commitment’ intended to ‘foster deeper connections between Australia, the Pacific and Timor-Leste.’ The Australian Government intends to further expand the program and has committed resources to ‘improving [the Scheme] and supporting Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste to participate in a way that delivers for each country’s unique labour mobility ambitions.’  It is critical to Australia’s relationships in the region that the PALM scheme provides greater worker agency and genuinely effective ways for workers to raise concerns about working conditions in Australia.”

A troubled history that taints the present

A 2023 report from the Australian National University, “Safety and wellbeing in Australia’s Pacific Labour mobility scheme”, detailed how close to 60,000 people from the Pacific Islands were transported to Australia to work on New South Wales and Queensland cotton farms and sugar cane fields through the 1860s to early 1900s. It was common practice to kidnap or trick men and boys into journeying by boat to Australia where they consequently faced exploitation via indentured labour contracts, earning the label of ‘blackbirding labour trade’. By 1901, the White Australia Policy led to many Pacific workers returning home voluntarily or being deported.

Pacific family fractured

More recently, the Australian Government has put effort – and dollars – into forging stronger ties with the Pacific Islands nations that Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, embraced as “our Pacific family” in 2022. In November, the government committed to a $48 million program to co-invest with Pacific governments in national public health responses to HIV and AIDS. Between 2021 and 2026, Australia has committed to an investment of $170 million into ‘Pacific Women Lead’ to support gender equality initiatives. There are further examples across security, ocean protection, fisheries and food security, and skills development. ‘Pacific Australia Skills’, to that end, is valued at $229.5 million between 2025 to 2029.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has a dedicated guide to its Pacific initiatives. In the guide to skills development, the department claims that “Labour Mobility is a win-win for Australia and sending countries. The Pacific Labour Scheme helps fill labour shortages in rural and regional Australia and provides employment opportunities for Pacific islanders to develop skills and earn income.”

As of October 2025, there were 31,885 workers actively participating in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM scheme) scheme in Australia.

While the scheme has grown exponentially since it was introduced, it has drawn significant ire from some human rights advocates.

Promises versus results

The PALM scheme enables eligible Australian businesses to employ workers from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste in circumstances where the availability of local labour falls short. These positions may be unskilled, low-skilled, or semi-skilled. Workers from the Pacific islands may be recruited for short-term periods of up to nine months, or long-term positions of one to four years. As the PALM scheme site explains: “The PALM scheme helps to fill labour gaps in rural and regional Australia and nationally for agriculture and select agriculture-related food product manufacturing sectors by offering employers access to a pool of reliable, productive workers. It also allows Pacific and Timor-Leste workers to take up jobs in Australia, develop their skills and send income home.”

The minimum work hours requirement of 120 hours over four weeks for short-term workers has been extended beyond 31 March 2026, allowing for seasonal and unexpected conditions that may affect work conditions in the agriculture and horticulture sectors. In tandem with DFAT, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations is responsible for monitoring and ensuring compliance with the PALM scheme employers’ obligations, with a grievance management policy and support service phone line in addition to – as the PALM scheme website says – “stringent employer vetting, a rigorous monitoring and compliance framework, [and] regular spot checks”.

Calls to a hotline run by NSW anti-slavery commissioner James Cockayne’s office, 1800 Freedom, have risen by 116 per cent since December last year. Nearly half the calls received each week are related to labour hire companies and, often, the PALM scheme.

Cockayne told SBS News that there is no licensing requirement for labour hire companies in NSW, making it attractive for “dodgy” companies to move to NSW from states where they are required to get a licence.

A NSW Government spokesperson told SBS News, “NSW has been actively engaged with the Commonwealth Government and other jurisdictions with a view to establishing a National Labour Hire Licencing Scheme, as recommended by the 2019 Migrant Workers’ Taskforce.”

The taskforce, Chaired by Professor Allan Fels AO and Deputy Chair Professor David Cousins AM, issued a report in March 2019 that seems to have gathered dust ever since, despite pertinent recommendations.

Fels and Cousins wrote, “Whilst the [Fair Work Ombudsman] FWO has primary responsibility for ensuring compliance with wage laws, the education and agricultural sectors, which benefit greatly from the presence of international students and working holiday makers respectively, also need to play greater roles in supporting this compliance effort than they have in the past. Ultimately it is the reputation of these sectors which is at stake. Immigration law also needs to play a stronger supportive role to employment law as regards temporary migrant workers.

We are concerned not just at the incidence of wage exploitation, but also with the detriment suffered by employees as a result of this conduct.”

One of the key recommendations was that the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) be amended to clarify that temporary migrant workers in Australia be entitled at all times to workplace protections under the Act. The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Bill 2023 (Cth) duly ensured that all migrant workers are entitled to labour protections regardless of their immigration status in Australia.

A collaborative initiative of the UTS Law Faculty and UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice, the Migrant Justice Institute’s recent survey of 370 PALM scheme workers found that many workers felt they had no realistic means of complaining about exploitation, nor to change employers without likely losing their sole source of income. The report, “Right or Wrong, Just Accept It’: How Employer-Tied Visas Foster Fear and Silence Among Pacific Workers on the PALM Scheme”, indicated 97 per cent of workers wanted to work in Australia, but fear of losing their job or their ability participate in the scheme again if they disengaged, rendered them silent. The survey, undertaken in late 2024, found that:

• 64 per cent of survey participants would change their employer if labour mobility were allowed
• 30 per cent stated they wanted to move because their workplace was unsafe
• 60 per cent wanted to move “to be treated better”
• 42 per cent of respondents stated that no or few workers would tell anyone if they weren’t paid correctly, other than friends or co-workers
• 34 per cent said they would tell someone other than a friend or co-worker if a supervisor told them to do unsafe tasks
• 25 per cent feared their employer may not invite them, family or community workers to work in Australia again

Berg says, “On the one hand the scheme is heavily regulated – there is some monitoring of workplaces by the Fair Work Ombudsman and Department of Employment. And the federal government has invested significant resources in worker protection through the Community Connections program, a dedicated help line to the Department of Employment, a formal grievance process, and a formal support role for Country Liaison Officers, who are representatives of the workers’ home governments in Australia.”

She explains, “The placement of workers with Approved Employers means that the government can vet employers prior to approval, and identify exactly where workers are employed. This provides the government with far more oversight over PALM workers’ working and living conditions than other migration programs like the Working Holiday scheme. However, workers’ visas tie them to their designated employer.”

If they leave their employer, they will be in breach of their visa and can be sent home with significant barriers to returning.

Berg says, “In practice, DEWR attempts to redeploy workers to alternative AEs where they raise a substantiated complaint. However, this assumes that workers will contact DEWR with a complaint and be able to substantiate it. As a consequence, we found that many PALM workers do not report problems at work due to retaliation fears in the context of these employer-tied visas.”

On 7 December, SBS News published a feature story that revealed the dire situations of PALM scheme workers. It claimed that more than 7,000 Pacific Island workers in the Australian agriculture and meat sectors are “at risk of exploitation”. The article told the story of 33-year-old Ethel (an alias), who left her home in the Solomon Islands in 2022 to participate in the PALM scheme as a fruit picker in the regional NSW town of Leeton. When she fell from a tractor in August, her injuries were serious enough to render her barely able to move. Ethel told SBS that in her first workplace – a northern Queensland farm – $1,100 was inexplicably deducted from her first pay, resulting in $500. Once she’d paid rent and transport, only $200 remained.

Berg says, “Unfortunately, the Fair Work Act requires employers to provide payslips including details of deductions, but it does not require these deductions to be itemised. It is very difficult for workers to understand deductions and challenge illegal deductions without this itemisation.”

In a statement to SBS News, the Department of Home Affairs confirmed that more than 7,000 workers disengaged from the scheme since 2019. Many are living either without a valid visa or on a bridging visa awaiting further determination. In Ethel’s case, since disengaging in 2022, she is living in NSW without work rights, government support, and dependent on illegal work for cash in hand. It was only through the aid of a local Leeton multicultural association that Ethel was able to seek hospital care, including three surgeries to her damaged leg.