Mango harvest hit by picker worries

Some of the annual harvest’s most reliable pickers have been delayed because bungling in the Seasonal Worker Program.

Prominent Katherine businesswoman Marie Piccone has slammed the Federal Government’s handling of the scheme saying excessive red tape was putting a multi-million horticultural industry at risk.

“There is a real lack of understanding from the Federal Government about the impact on this industry,” Ms Piccone, a recent entrepreneur of the year award winner in Queensland, said.

Denied access to the full complement of Pacific Island workers now that harvest has begun, there are also fewer backpackers available because of the political debate over taxing their income.

“There are less backpackers than we have seen for some years, it’s a very stressful time,” she said.

Most of Katherine’s mango farms, which have quickly grown to be the biggest in the nation, are in the early stages of the harvest which will continue for the next two months.

Other farm operators, who did not want to be named, were also worried about access to backpacker labor in particular in the final weeks before the rain was due.

They said backpackers had not been wooed by the Federal Government’s recent decision to drop its proposed 32.5 per cent tax rate on backpacker income to 19 per cent.

“The damage has been done,” one grower told Katherine Times.

Ms Piccone is the managing director of Manbulloo Mangoes which operates the 350ha Manbulloo farm at Katherine and other large orchards near Townsville.

Manbulloo requires 100-150 workers at the peak of the harvest.

“We urgently need those Federal Government approvals so we can the Seasonal Workers Program moving,” she said.

“It is extremely difficult to convince some of the people in the departments, and you seem to talk to a different person each time, that this is urgent.”

“It exposes us to a great deal of commercial risk,” she said.

This story was first published on The Katherine Times.