A Leap into the Future: The Australia-Japan Working Holiday Agreement and Immigration Policy
The Australia-Japan Working Holiday Agreement of 1980 represented a leap of faith on the part of both governments in their own people. Unprecedented for Japan, and breaking with Anglophone cultural stereotypes for Australia, neither government could have objectively predicted the enormous success of the agreement, or that it would become a model for many more such agreements. Both governments counted on recognition developing of the cultural benefits of the agreement. Neither could have foreseen that the agreement would eventually have significant labour market effects, mainly positive, though different, in Australia and Japan.
Seasonal migrant labour: a boon for Australia's country towns?
Introduction In 2002 Queensland farmer Ian Nielsen was unable to harvest 30 per cent of his 80 hectare asparagus crop because he could not secure enough workers to do the picking. As a result 150 tonnes of asparagus worth around $1 million dollars was left in the fields. Most of the asparagus had been destined for export to Japan. Nielsen employs up to 150 casual workers during the asparagus harvest but securing labour is his ‘biggest and most difficult challenge’. He told a Senate committee that the situation was so bad that many of his farming colleagues had given up growing asparagus and switched to ‘crops such as peanuts, which can be mechanically harvested’. He said that similar labour shortages afflict citrus, onion and potato growers: ‘There are not enough workers capable of handling the physical rigours of harvesting fruit and vegetables’ (Nielsen, 2003). The Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (now called Growcom) estimates that due to labour shortages its members lose up to 10 per cent of their crops – produce estimated to be worth $900 million (cited in EDC, 2004, p.44). Such problems are not confined to Queensland. Fruit growers from around Bunbury in the southwest of WA say demand for orchard workers outstrips supply, particularly during harvest season (Shine, 2005). In Victoria, Nigel Garrard, the head of SPC-Ardmona, says that for the last three years production at his Shepparton cannery has been lower than it might have been because ‘fruit has been left on the trees because there aren’t enough people to pick it’ (Colman and Korporaal, 2005), while a Yarra Valley berry grower says labour shortages in 2004 forced him to ‘drop’ 6 tonnes of raspberries from his vines. A leading Australian fruit exporter says the lack of a reliable supply of seasonal labour significantly inhibits industry growth in the Murray Valley irrigation region and limits export income .
Tolerance as an Ideological Category
The Culturalization of Politics Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, not emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? The immediate answer is the liberal multiculturalist’s basic ideological operation: the culturalization of politics. Political differences, differences conditioned by political inequality, economic exploitation, and so on, are naturalized and neutralized into cultural differences, different ways of life, which are something given, something that cannot be overcome, but must be merely tolerated. To this, of course, one should answer in Benjaminian terms: from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture. The cause of this culturalization is the retreat and failure of direct political solutions (the welfare state, socialist projects, and so on). Tolerance is their postpolitical ersatz.