SERGIO: My name is Sergio. Good morning, honourable house. I got a great honour to say thank you for everyone to accept me to come and express my right, my story about the long journey I faced.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: He tells the senators about his experiences in Victoria, where he’s not paid per hour, but instead for how many grapes he picks.

SERGIO: And when I go to ANZ to check my balance I just receive only $70 and I always ask my employer to give me the breakdown for the deduction. But he didn’t,

ily were dependent on him, but he was not able to pay his phone to call his family, or send money back home.

SERGIO: I got my parents. I got two sisters, three sisters, to buy the school fee. Maybe I think that take five months, I didn’t speak with my father.

SERGIO: No, I came here for money. I’m not come here for slave. You should give me a better life.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: Later in the day, the DFAT official who heads up the worker scheme is called upon to answer questions.

They can’t just say, OK, I’ll just change. They can’t do that. HELEN MCCORMACK: They would need to go through through the department

I didn’t send my money

MATT CANAVAN: would would just be able to get paid more than enough of a reason if someone came to the department and said, Hey, I got an offer of around a bit more money down the road, a different farm. Can I change jobs?

MATT CANAVAN: it does sound like indentured labour then. I mean, there’s no competition at all. Yeah. You know, they can’t change jobs. I mean, it doesn’t allow this and to respond to market conditions like in the normal way we would in the labour market. It also potentially, I mean, we are hearing a lot of evidence of misconduct and my view is very much just a minority of farmers. But but the conditions are ripe for that misconduct if someone can’t easily change from a job they don’t like.

HELEN MCCORMACK: So we are looking at revising the settings in the future, and it has been an issue that’s been brought up.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: I catch up with Sergio after the meeting. He says he hopes speaking out today helps the next generation of workers.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: We reached out to the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Foerign Affairs – the two principal agencies involved – to ask about Sergio – and other workers’ concerns.

They told us workers can move between APPROVED employers, but it requires departmental endorsement. And I’d imagine that can be pretty hard to arrange for the average seasonal worker .

They also said they are looking at changing the scheme to make it easier for Pacific Island workers to switch employers provided they have government approval.

GEOFF SMITH: That’s what I can say. It’s been positive. We’ve got people. I believe they’re not holding hands, but we’re touching fingers. And that’s to me, means that we’re communicating.

MARIO CHRISTODOULOU: But as we finish up, he mentions something that happened as he was leaving the hearing in Canberra. Some of the workers – he doesn’t say who – approached him.

MATT CANAVAN: But if there’s another employer who says they aware of, Look, you can come work for me if they’re just unhappy or they don’t like where they’re working, like any other Australian, they can’t just switch jobs

GEOFF SMITH: And as I said to these guys, if you’re going to worry about what’s going to happen, how can you fix up anything that is happening? So let’s fix up the things that are happening.