Main area: Migration
Theme: Labour mobility
Assessment: Partially ODA-eligible
Provider country: Australia
Recipient country: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
Implementing agency: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)
Budget (AUD million): FY22 23.78, FY23 34.71
Year(s): Ongoing
Purpose code: NA
Case number: Migration / 16
Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme
The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme supports the development of nine Pacific countries and Timor-Leste by providing temporary work opportunities. Under the scheme, workers can develop their skills, earn income and send home remittances by taking up jobs in Australia. Eligible employers can recruit for seasonal work for up to nine months or for longer-term roles between one and four years in unskilled, low-skilled and semi-skilled positions across a range of sectors, including agriculture, meat processing, tourism, and aged care sectors. Throughout their placement, workers can participate in a skills development programme to obtain formal qualifications in addition to on-the-job skills acquisition.
Development objectives are at the core of the PALM scheme. The primary objective of the scheme is to facilitate sustainable circular labour mobility from Pacific islands and Timor-Leste to Australia, to contribute to inclusive economic growth and social development for workers and their communities. The programme responds to recipient countries’ request.
Providing labour market access to Pacific and Timorese workers enhances the livelihoods of workers and their communities, who rely on remittances from overseas work and have the opportunity to develop and take-home skills that contribute to the economic development of their home countries. The success of the scheme is highlighted by the following results:
There are over 24 000 Pacific and Timorese workers in Australia. Seasonal workers send, on average, AUD 1 061 in remittances back to their families and communities each month, while longer term workers remit on average AUD 1 310 per month (as of May 2022).
As reported by the World Bank (2021), remittances from PALM workers have real impacts for families and communities. Households who receive remittances report lower levels of financial anxiety and are significantly less likely to resort to negative coping strategies such as selling livestock or taking children out of school.
Workers develop invaluable skills on the job to take back to their communities. There are also opportunities to earn formal qualifications. In September 2021, a skills development programme launched to support the costs of training and qualifications for workers, from work ready skills such as first aid courses to formal certificate level qualifications.
This activity is deemed partially ODA-eligible. The PALM programme (DFAT part) is eligible as its primary purpose is to benefit Pacific workers, their families and communities, through a focus on improving migrants’ skills that they subsequently bring to their home countries. (However, the fact that the migrants may send remittances to their home countries is not, in itself, a sufficient condition for the programme to qualify as ODA.) In line with Criterion 7, the ancillary benefits to the Australian labour market do not preclude eligibility and, despite the programme incurring costs in the donor-country for more than 12 months, it meets the required conditions for ODA-eligibility: time-limited (four years), circular and responds to recipient countries’ request.
Only the component financed by the DFAT is ODA-eligible (activities of other government agencies in delivering the PALM scheme are not considered ODA-eligible and are excluded from Australia’s ODA reporting: Fair Work Ombudsman, the Department of Home Affairs and the Australian Border Force).
This work was approved and declassified by the Development Assistance Committee’s Working Party on Development Finance Statistics.
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