Exposing the Lie of the Land

Exposing the lie of the land

Andrew Rule

October 10, 2009

THE savagery of the killing suggests it was more than a robbery gone wrong. It happened in Robinvale, the Murray Valley town that irrigation built, where ethnic tensions burst into brutal pay-night brawls every fruit-picking season. On April 1, 2001, an angry picker turned up at his boss' house in the town asking for money he was owed. He argued with the 50-year-old woman who had let him into the kitchen.

He knew she had hidden cash because she and her son paid pickers in banknotes. When she brushed him off, he snapped. He grabbed a meat cleaver, cut off her hand then hacked her to death in front of her terrified granddaughters, aged six and four, and two toddlers being babysat. He found a 26-year-old woman hiding in a bedroom and killed her, too.

He locked the children in a room and rifled the house, taking a bank card and cash. Then he drove off in the family's van.

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At Bendigo, three hours south, he emptied the first victim's bank account. He took a taxi to Melbourne and vanished into the illegal migrants' underground network. He might never have been caught if someone had not tipped off police in Sydney five years later. He was sentenced in Melbourne early last year to 25 years' jail.

To the outside world it might have seemed just another unspeakably stupid murder by a greedy thief. It did not make huge headlines, maybe because both victims and killer were Vietnamese.

Few knew the killer's real name and none knew where he had gone. Many had reasons for keeping silent: they, like him, were illegal workers trapped in circumstances similar to those that had sparked his murderous rage.

The older murder victim, Ba Nguyen, was a ''labour contractor'' in the horticulture industry.

As Immigration Department arrests show, many contractors recruit ''illegals'' to prune trees, pick fruit and harvest vegetables. Some use ''subcontractors'' to distance themselves from illegality, but they hold the whip hand. In fact, the butchering of the two women was a glimpse of the labour black market: an open secret wherever producers dodge rules to harvest crops on time and under budget. At worst, it verges on people-trafficking, echoing the ''Kanaka'' trade of ''blackbirders'' luring Solomon Islanders to work Queensland cane fields more than a century ago. At best, it undermines minimum award wages and conditions - and costs legal Australian residents potential jobs.

One thing is clear. Labour contracting has a dark side: the exploitation of often vulnerable people by the greedy and the ruthless. And it is spreading.

THE decrepit farmhouse on the outskirts of Sale was built between the wars, around the time Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath about the exploitation of America's rural poor.

The jerry-built weatherboard, never much, is overdue for demolition. The fake-brick cladding sags, the roof is rusted, the gutters are choked and leaking. Cows have smashed the rickety fence and fouled the porch and outbuildings. It looks unliveable - certainly unrentable. But someone thinks it is fine for ''guest'' workers.

At the front the house looks deserted, but there are clothes on the line, unseen from the road. Next to a tumbledown shed, almost hidden, three young women sit in the sun on a pile of old timber.

They have just arrived from Nepal, they say hesitantly in broken English. Two claim to be ''dependants'' - with husbands studying in Melbourne. The third says she is a student on a working holiday.

Two men sidle from the house. The older of the pair says he is studying business at Holmesglen College. He is more convincing than the others. He says he spent the previous day cutting rocket leaf and is hoping for more work tomorrow. His companion is silent, and eyes the young women meaningfully before returning inside. The women agree to let The Age look at their quarters.

The house is dank, damp and dark, with the smell empty buildings get before they are burned or bulldozed. Mattresses are scattered on the floors of four bare rooms. A dozen workers sleep there at night, the women say.

The house next door is nearly as decrepit, with weeds springing from the spouting. There, behind closed blinds, four fresh arrivals from Taiwan are waiting to start work in the morning. Across the road is another house, the best of the three. No one answers the door, but the work gloves hung on the fence and army of gumboots near the back door suggest that it, too, houses many more contract labourers.

Nearby is a vegetable crate stamped with the name of a farm group that supplies supermarkets nationwide with quality salad leaves, hand cut and sorted. Most people reading this will have bought them.

From the road, the houses look empty. There are no cars, and blinds stay shut. Each morning around dawn, vans arrive to pick up unseen occupants - a scene repeated at other shabby houses around the district.

On the way to the farm - a sophisticated horticultural enterprise worth millions - the vans speed along Powerscourt Street, Maffra. The old house at number 69 is for sale for $169,500 ''but negotiable''. Meanwhile, it rents for just $200 a week, which might surprise those who pay to sleep there - up to 15 people most nights, hints a local agent.

The most recent arrival is a friendly 28-year-old from Bali. She hopes to work ''at the garden'' the next day she says. She is too anxious to leave the house to find the nearest shops. In Bali she worked in a tourist ''spa'' but work was scarce. With her is a Javanese man. He is older, watchful and quiet. Both are vague about how long they hope to work here.

The house is basic but not a slum, its occupants better off than those shivering in the two old dumps at Sale. What they have in common is the rent they all pay: $80 a week, each - taken from the $13 an hour they ''clear'' once they start work. Less the fuel money charged by the contractors. Less the cost of secateurs or knives some have to buy or replace.

The rent is an extortion racket, with the middlemen leasing each house for roughly between $50 and $200 a week and sub-letting mattress space at a massive profit - ripping close to $1000 cash a week from the occupants of each dwelling. Not quite as lucrative a racket as brothels or drugs but far less risky.

Periodic raids by the Immigration Department, which scooped up 19 people in the Sale district recently, are catastrophic for illegal workers but more a nuisance for those who employ them. Those working illegally (on tourist visas) tolerate bad conditions because they fear being deported.

Those who aren't ''illegals'' can be working an angle, too. Bogus ''students'' or their parents pay for questionable courses, hoping to qualify for permanent residency. It's migration by stealth, with the tacit collusion of all who profit from them.

The contractors who procure docile, low-paid workers are pimps for profiteers. In Britain, where 23 Chinese illegal immigrants were drowned while gathering shellfish in 2004, people use another word: gangmasters. There, they can get up to 10 years' jail.

THE ''okies'' whose plight inspired Steinbeck to write The Grapes Of Wrath limped through the Depression in jalopies held together with fencing wire and fading hopes of a promised land over the horizon. Dreams still get broken but at least the transport has improved since then.

In Australia, 70 years on, the poorest workers are moved to farms in the best vehicles - new Toyota Hilux vans with dark-tinted windows. They see out but the world can't see in, which is how the operators like it.

The new diesel vans are a justified expense for the gangmasters: they get workers to paddocks on time regardless of long distances travelled from a changing list of isolated ''safe houses''.

Wait near the biggest vegetable farm near Maffra and you see five vans arrive within minutes of each other from 7am. By 7.30am a swarm of workers, wearing fluorescent safety tops and pointed ''coolie'' hats and veils, are doubled over in the neat rows against a backdrop of Gippsland's blue hills, doing handwork machines cannot do as well or as cheaply: cutting, sorting, packing with no yellow leaves, no dry stalks, no feathers.

Modern marketing demands that the product be supermarket-flawless but keenly priced. This would explain why every work team has a supervisor pushing them.

When The Age takes a photograph of one team (from a public road) the Malaysian supervisor strides over, demanding a ''permit''. He says we should talk to ''the office'' in the farmyard.

The woman in the office says she has recently moved from Bacchus Marsh. She telephones one of the owners to ask if he wants to talk about contract labour to The Age. He declines.

Union organiser Sam Beechey, who lives nearby, says pay and conditions are being eroded because new owners from north and west of Melbourne have brought contract crews to replace the mix of locals, itinerant seasonal workers and backpackers working their way around Australia.

''At least they've got toilets here,'' Beechey says, pointing at the movable cubicle parked beside a paddock. Better than on some farms in the Goulburn and Murray valleys, he says. ''It was terrible there. Women would just have to squat between the rows or on a board over a couple of bricks.''

The Maffra pickers are lucky. Workers tell The Age that at many orchards in the Murray Valley pickers still don't have lavatories or running water during the day. And, after work, most are in houses so overcrowded that the single septic tank toilets are continually blocked.

Standards are dropping because of the influx of ''illegals'', says one Indian student worker, who demands anonymity. He says women and men urinate in the open rather than complain for fear of being sacked. It's cheaper and easier to get workers who won't complain than it is to put in facilities.

In any group of workers, it is possible that some are genuine low-budget tourists on working holidays - and that some are permanent residents making extra cash. But those familiar with the scene say rising numbers of ''illegals'' have pushed out the seasonal workforce that comprised a mix of locals, students, backpackers and nomadic workers.

Many are uneasy about this but few want to go public. Some fear repercussions; others fear hurting the value of their businesses or property. Backpacker hostel and caravan park owners are directly affected.

Clean backpacker accommodation that was good value at $100-plus a week - and which for years provided seasonal labour - struggles to compete when farms use contractors whose gangs work harder for less. The gangmasters win jobs by shaving hourly wages - last week reportedly at a new low of $13 an hour, gross - and rake off extra profits by gouging rent and fuel money.

Union organisers say it smacks of the rise of a ''coolie'' underclass who clear as little as $7 or $8 an hour. But unions are not the only critics.

Tony Dawkins, from a longtime Gippsland farming family, runs Glenmaggie Wines vineyard near Maffra. He says it is disturbing that grape growers elsewhere - and vegetable growers in his own district - use labour contractors.

Despite facing similar cost pressures in the labour-intensive vineyard, Dawkins puts a moral case against using illegal workers. He has informed local state member Craig Ingram of what he calls standover tactics and rent scams.

''I'm not interested in catching the poor little illegal workers,'' he says. ''Growers spend multimillion dollars on machinery, dams and packing sheds. It then seems absurd to say the success of the whole thing depends on paying below the award.''

Newcomers attracted to East Gippsland by the fertile soil and relatively plentiful irrigation water include hard- nosed veterans of the industry from west and north of Melbourne who brought contract labour with them.

When one established vegetable farm, run by the Taylor family, sold to ''outsiders'' last year, several local workers - machinery operators - disliked what they saw as oppressive work practices. Some left. Some turned a blind eye to protect their own jobs. Few want to go on the record.

One longtime Taylor employee told The Age: ''I'm not scared of anyone - but I've got a wife and kids here and if anything happened …'' He doesn't finish the sentence. ''I'd go back and work for Taylors tomorrow - but not these people.''

Josh McGowan does not have his own family, but he does have friends among Asian guest workers, and mistrusts contractors who use illegal workers. He also questions why huge enterprises that invest millions in land, irrigation, machinery and marketing then connive to pay below-award wages.

At least three other big enterprises in the area use suspect contractors, he says. One huge operation reputedly ''lost'' seven workers, arrested when authorities raided a house at Rosedale recently.

There are many contractors, he says, but the biggest is based in Swan Hill. And is known only as ''Afrika''.

REAL names are the first casualty in contract labour land. For a man reputed to control up to 1000 workers a year through his business, Murray Valley Agricultural, ''Afrika'' likes to stay incognito. A ready talker, he goes quiet when told the name on his passport is Zoyeb Yamani. ''You've done your homework,'' he says coldly.

He got the nickname working his way around Australia after arriving ''30 years ago'' from Tanzania - where, ironically, his forebears were Indian labourers imported to build railways.

He did everything from mining to trawler-fishing to shopfitting - and fruit picking. Five years ago, he says, he arrived in Swan Hill with $20. Until then, he worked for others and gambled his pay. But after recruiting extra pickers for a farmer, he decided to give up gambling and start organising others to do the dirty work.

It took off. Today, he owns a thriving Asian food shop and two houses - one to live in, one as an office. He runs four new Toyota vans and some older ones. Most days, he is gone before dawn, in a paddock anywhere from Gippsland to Mildura. Some say he also runs workers in Queensland.

His reputation is that if a farm wants

50 people to start work the next day, he delivers. He tells The Age he could arrange it with a call to Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide. He claims no one works unless they have the correct visas. He says he cannot afford any ''more'' trouble with Immigration and uses subcontractors to distance himself from any possible illegality.

Afrika isn't as friendly as he acts. He circulates the registration and make of the car used by The Age, warning others it could be a front for Immigration. He has reasons to be wary. Proof of this is the derelict house north of town he used to hide workers in until agents raided it last fruit season. The empty house is worse than the ones near Sale. The front door hangs open. Inside are signs of a sudden departure: runners and tracksuit bottoms left hanging on nails in the walls; a tiny pair of thongs, a bottle of muesli and a Chinese-language newspaper on a kitchen floor littered with bird and mouse droppings. A porn magazine on the filthy bench.

Outside, under a skillion roof, is a crude shower rigged from old corrugated iron next to a choked lavatory. The only trouble anyone went to was to stretch a huge length of green shadecloth on fence posts between house and road.

It takes a minute to realise why. It is no windbreak. It was to stop the outside world seeing the shameful thing behind it.

There are other shameful things. Deep in the orchard backblocks south of the highway is a rough camp in a bush paddock. A toilet block is surrounded by caravans, chained and padlocked. Locals say this is where a big orchardist houses workers. None of it could pass council health inspection.

''It's the wild west out there in the season,'' says one observer. ''The pickers are covered up so you see nothing but their eyes and if someone official turns up they scatter and run.''

The owner has a reputation as a hard man who stands over illegal workers, refusing to pay them the agreed amount after weeks of work, knowing they are too frightened of deportation to resist.

But he is not tough enough to bluff everyone. He turns away British, Irish and German backpackers now because when he tried to underpay a group of them a couple of seasons ago, they chased him and broke the lights and aerials on his utility.

Another notorious grower, north of Nyah, goes further. He hires illegal workers, doesn't pay them for several weeks' work - then secretly informs the Immigration Department so the workers get arrested at night and taken away.

The grower gets free slave labour. The department gets arrests. Everyone's a winner - except the workers. But they keep coming - and so do the gangmasters.

Early last week a well-dressed man wheeled his midnight-blue BMW into a caravan park near Swan Hill. He was looking for a discount deal to house his gang of workers.

When the proprietor mentioned the likelihood of raids and the necessity of work visas, he left.

Andrew Rule is a deputy editor.