When Ezekiel landed in Australia as a guest worker two years ago, he was full of hope.

He was here as part of a government scheme to allow businesses to hire workers from the Pacific Islands to fill a chronic labour shortage in the agricultural sector.

Two years later, he is in limbo, on a 90-day Support to Trafficked People Program, after ending up destitute and homeless, and the company that sponsored him being investigated by the Fair Work Ombudsman for abuse and mistreatment of workers.

Ezekiel symbolises the failure of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visa scheme to provide a safety net for workers who feel they have no choice but to leave their employer.

He is one of thousands who have left the scheme, disengaged and vulnerable to further exploitation.

The PALM scheme was devised to help fill labour gaps in rural and regional Australia in sectors including agriculture, horticulture and meat processing. It will soon turn to aged care. The goal was to offer employers access to a pool of reliable, productive workers, who would obtain a visa for up to four years, tied to their employer.

At the end of July this year, there were almost 32,000 recorded PALM workers in Australia, with most of them coming from Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

A scheme with a dark side

The PALM scheme sounds good in theory, but it failed to adequately factor in a pathway or safety net if employers were unscrupulous.

PALM workers do not have the right to change employers during their stay in Australia. They can only be transferred to another employer by request of the original employer or at the discretion of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which can be tricky.

It means workers who abandon their employer and the scheme due to a variety of reasons — including wage theft, excessive fees for accommodation, bullying or sexual abuse — become absconders, or disengaged, and lose their rights.

Workers who leave the scheme are essentially being abandoned, unable to access food, shelter, or healthcare when they are sick. Some are wandering around the community, disempowered and desperate, with no checks and balances.

This glaring failure of policy has placed the burden on local communities, social support providers and charities to offer support such as clothing, food and temporary accommodation.

‘The problem has exploded’

In areas such as Griffith and Leeton, in NSW’s Riverina, the situation is reaching crisis point.

I visited both towns over the weekend to see how bad it was. 

It’s shocking. The community workers and volunteers are overwhelmed.

Ken Dachi, a community worker and multicultural affairs adviser at Leeton Shire Council, estimates there are at least 300 undocumented workers in the town of 6,000.

“The problem has exploded in front of our eyes,” he said. “PALM is failing.”

He said there needed to be a state and federal parliamentary inquiry into the crisis to get to the bottom of why workers are leaving the scheme and how they can be better supported.

“Domestic violence, drunk driving, drugs, depression, threats of deportation, vulnerability and local organisations are left to pick up the pieces,” he said.

Two weeks ago, Australian Border Force raided several houses in Leeton looking for workers who had left the PALM scheme and had no legal visa. They issued bridging visas for two weeks, which don’t allow them to work. They either have to find the money to pay their way home or apply for assistance.

Retired Leeton mayor Paul Maytom and president of the Leeton Multicultural Support Group has been helping workers for decades. He has been documenting the crisis in a series of handwritten notebooks, which records most of the people he has helped, tracking their names, country of origin, visa history and experiences.

He said some can’t afford basic medical supplies. He said one worker who helped had mangled his finger and it had tripled in size, with part of it having to be amputated. He helped pay for some of the first aid out of his own pocket and helped him navigate the system.

He said he does everything from sourcing prams for new mothers, organising medical appointments, temporary accommodation, and filling in forms.

Less than an hour up the road in Griffith, long-time volunteer Carmel La Rocca, president of the multicultural council of Griffith, said the situation is the worst she has seen. She said some are living in dilapidated houses and farms, some don’t have heating or running water.

“We’ve seen 2,500 people since the start of the year and that’s without a shopfront, they find us,” La Rocca said, adding a large portion were on PALM visas. “We were giving out sleeping bags, because of the cold.”

One woman from the Solomon Islands was on the PALM scheme in Townsville but left it when she became pregnant, then the father ran off. 

She came to Griffith to pick fruit for cash and was sleeping on the floor with the baby and a sheet.

“She was having mental health issues and we helped her out with furniture and clothes,” La Rocca said.

Her current accommodation is shared with eight others, sometimes up to 18. It is in severe disrepair and infested with cockroaches. The landlord charges $600 a week.

The bathroom is so old and unhygienic that she washes her baby in a bowl outside. Her bedroom, small enough to fit a single bed and little else, has a rope and nail on her bedroom door because she doesn’t feel safe.

“The humanitarian side has been forgotten by the government. They lost sight of humanity itself,” La Rocca said.

Report shines a light

The Office of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner also helps workers, including Ezekiel, and this week tabled the Be Our Guests report in NSW parliament this week, after a two-year investigation.

Authored by the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner James Cockayne, Sophia Kagan and Fiona Ng, the Be Our Guests report finds practices such as debt bondage, forced labour, servitude, deceptive recruiting and human trafficking are all in play.

It is sobering reading.

“Temporary migrant workers, particularly low-wage workers in agriculture, horticulture and meat processing in rural NSW, face risks of debt bondage, deceptive recruiting, forced labour and, in extreme cases, servitude, sexual servitude or even human trafficking,” Cockayne said in his report.

Cockayne said while temporary migration was largely well managed, a minority of temporary migrant workers were at risk of modern slavery.

He said reports and other evidence suggest that hundreds – perhaps thousands – of temporary migrant workers, notably disengaged PALM workers, may currently lack access to appropriate accommodation, healthcare and other essential services. This leaves many destitute and at high risk of exploitation. PALM workers, backpackers, international students, skilled temporary workers, graduates, those on regionally sponsored visas, are all at risk.

Cockayne noted that the Modern Slavery Act gives his office no formal investigative power.

He made a series of recommendations including a parliamentary review of modern slavery risks faced by PALM and other temporary migrant workers working in rural and regional NSW and that the NSW government advocate for the federal government to review the PALM and the working holiday maker program.

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‘Please, I need help’

Twenty-eight-year-old Ezekiel first came to Tasmania in 2022 from Papua New Guinea with labour hire firm Linx Tas, which is now in liquidation and is being investigated by the Fair Work Ombudsman over allegations it underpaid workers and abused their rights.

In a statement, the FWO said its investigation into Linx was ongoing, and that it was not appropriate to comment further.

In his report tabled in parliament, the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner said he had received requests for support and assistance from temporary migrant workers whose treatment suggests they have been exploited by a resurrected or “phoenixed” version of Linx, operating under a different name and with temporary migrant workers on other valid visa classes. 

“That [resurrected] company now appears to be in liquidation, further complicating attempts by affected workers to receive appropriate remedy and compensation for the harms they have suffered,” he said.

Ezekiel worked long hours, sometimes seven days a week, picking fruit. Out of his wages he paid for accommodation, a shared house filled with bunk beds for the workers and travel to get him to and from work. He said he ended up with $200 to $300 a week. Out of that he had to buy food and the rest he sent to his mother, who is raising his two young children, after his wife died of cancer.

Ezekiel left Linx Tas in 2023— and the PALM scheme — which meant he no longer had a valid visa, so had to find work that would pay in cash. He tried Brisbane and Melbourne, before heading to the western Riverina region around Griffith and Leeton.

He has slept in parks, churches and abandoned houses, worked for an employer in Melbourne who some weeks paid him nothing. He has been threatened by some unscrupulous employers with deportation and conned by someone who told him for $500 he would be able to apply for a protection visa that would allow him to work legally in the country. It turned out to be fake.

Ezekiel eventually got help from the NSW Anti-Slavery Commission and the Red Cross. They managed to buy him some time with the 90-day Support to Trafficked People Program, which is funded by the federal government. He is currently living in a hostel and has some income support for food and essentials.

But the government support runs out after 90 days. After that his path is unclear.

Ezekiel is from the PNG highlands, which is embroiled in guerilla warfare, with houses burned and people killed, including two brothers and his father. His mother was forced to flee with his children to another village.

“I have a target if I go back. I need to stay here and work and send money home,” he said.

His desperation is palpable. If the government doesn’t give him a visa and work rights after 90 days, he will be back to square one.

“Please, I need help,” he said.