Increasing taxes tends to discourage participation, we increased taxes on smokes and pre mixed alcoholic drinks to reduce consumption yet the dopey dim witted leftists think increasing taxes in a good thing.
Fruit picking season in full swing but southern states struggle to find labour
The fruit picking season is well underway, but growers have been left short-handed and wondering where all the casual labour has gone.
Fruit growers in Victoria could have a shortfall of up to 3000 seasonal workers to pick their fruit.
Mike Crisera from Fruit Growers Victoria said the situation was a cause for concern.
Tonnes of fruit left to rot
In Tasmania, one berry farm has contacted Fruit Growers Tasmania looking for more labour after they had to leave hundreds of tonnes of fruit to rot on the ground because there were not enough pickers available.
Phil Pike, business development manager for Fruit Growers Tasmania, said the farmer was not alone.
"That's a challenge that we're hearing from across the state," Mr Pike said.
Backpacker tax an issue
"Certainly the backpacker tax and the reputational damage that that debacle did was forecast by us (and) by senior growers," Mr Pike said.
The tax was introduced by the Federal Government at the beginning of last year and taxes workers on working holiday visas 15 per cent on earnings above $37,000."When those second year visa-holders left, which was at the end of 2017, would the numbers of first-year visa holders for 2018-2019 be there? At this stage they aren't."
Mr Jennings was the strawberry grower from Cygnet who lost hundreds of tonnes of berries due to the shortage.
"There's just nowhere near enough people to go around at the moment," Mr Jennings said.
"We started picking mid-October. I would say the past eight weeks we would have been roughly about 80 people each day short of what we needed."
Despite advertising this week on the Tasmanian Agriculture Jobs website for extra pickers he said the response was nowhere near what would be needed to get the crop off.
"At this stage, it's possibly too late for us. In November and early December we would have lost about 300 tonnes of fruit just left to rot," he said
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-12/fruit-pickers-in-short-supply/9320256?smid...