00:02On a rainy day near Mount Barker, strawberry grower Len Hounderside is looking to see
00:07how his plants are coming along.
00:10They look like they're healthy enough and doing quite well.
00:13For the past 20 years he's employed backpackers on working holiday visas to harvest the strawberries.
00:20Where you have a peak of a season come through, you've got more fruit than you thought, you
00:24can employ a group of backpackers and that's widely used in the industry in West Australia.
00:31In a few weeks these growing tunnels should be full of fruit pickers, but an unexpected
00:37announcement by the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on the issuing of working holiday visas
00:43has him worried.
00:44The processing of working holiday visas at the moment, they're still being processed
00:49but they are being processed more slowly.
00:51There's no real reason that we can see for that.
00:54It doesn't impact on housing.
00:56They'll either stay in a backpacker hostel somewhere or have their own vehicle that they
01:01can accommodate themselves in.
01:03The pause on visas reminding him of the Covid era, when fruit could not be picked.
01:09Millions of dollars worth of crop that went on the ground as a result.
01:12So that's the potential of what happens.
01:14In WA's grain belt, farmers are concerned the aim to reduce overall immigration numbers
01:21is off target.
01:22It's not going to help the housing crisis because they're not targeting the people that
01:26are coming, that are buying the houses.
01:28They're targeting temporary ones that aren't, they're not buying houses.
01:31They're here just for a short timeframe.
01:33That's their visa.
01:34The pressure to find a solution is growing.
01:38The pressure to find a solution is growing.
01:38You should find a solution, but you should not abandon them.
01:39And then do poorly and nies the amount.
01:39Getting Johnsadoff has over the whole crack of marshall network
01:39If gypsy nodes are Julia's around the same piece of bl露 andлишком
01:40that these lines aren't with their existing vídeos.
01:40Can you target this?
