‘No Aussies or Europeans wanted’. That’s how an advertisement posted to a social media job search page looking for strawberry pickers in Queensland ended. The controversial post has outraged Bundaberg jobseekers who say they are struggling to get work or are being turned away in preference of foreign workers.
Local farms say there are a few strawberry farms in the regional town being run by Asian families who only hire workers from those countries. But they also say that even though they don’t discriminate, most people who contact them are foreign backpackers, with just 3 percent of calls from Australians looking to do the manual labour.
One farmer -who did not want to be named- said: “We don’t care who we get, provided they’re right handed and have a driver’s licence.”
But according to news.com.au, another man said the issue had been a problem for years. “I was on a farm out at Emerald years ago, owned by a Filipino and run by Chileans with 500 workers. Of these, 300 were Indians, 190 were Koreans and only 10 of us were Aussies,” he said.
