Australia has today signed with Vietnam the first bilateral Memorandum of Understanding under the Australian Agriculture Visa Program. Vietnam’s participation in this program strengthens and extends the already rich people-to-people links our two countries share. For decades, Vietnamese workers, students, businesspeople, and tourists have made extensive contributions to Australia. The Australian Government looks forward to this continuing under the program.
Vietnam’s early participation in the Australian Agriculture Visa Program demonstrates the Morrison Government’s commitment to deepening cooperation under the Australia-Vietnam Strategic Partnership. It is a key initiative of the Australia-Vietnam Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy launched by our countries’ Prime Ministers on 1 November 2021. This followed my visit to Vietnam in November 2021.
I thank the Government of Vietnam, Minister for Labour HE Dao Ngoc Dung and Ambassador Nguyen Tat Thanh.
Australia and Vietnam share a strong and optimistic agenda in our relationship. We are bound by warm ties of friendship and family that extend across every level of community, government and business. This step reflects what is possible when we work together.
The Australian Agriculture Visa program is intended to provide a sustainable, long-term contribution to Australia’s labour supply that supports Australia’s agricultural and primary industry sectors. It supplements the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, which remains the mainstay for meeting agricultural workforce shortages in our primary industries sector and the key solution for the current harvest.
Under the Australian Agriculture Visa program, employees will be recruited to work across a range of agriculture sectors, including horticulture, dairy, wool, grains, fisheries and forestry, including support services and primary processing.
For further information, please refer to the DFAT website.