Migrant worker exploitation is not a series of isolated breaches. It is a system. As NSW considers reform, the question is not whether to regulate labour hire, but how. Victoria’s licensing scheme offers a working model and a warning.

By GILES FRYER – 28 May 2026
Recipient of the Law Society’s John Hennessy Scholarship for 2025

“Berry pickers wanted!” reads a post in a Facebook group for backpackers in NSW.

The blueberry harvest in Coffs Harbour is in full swing, and dozens of similar ads appear daily across social media and online job boards. Written in different languages and hastily drafted, they follow a familiar pattern. Vague promises of easy, well-paid farm work. Photos of young workers picking and packing berries into branded trays, with offers of accommodation and transport. But the employer details are noticeably absent. Just a name and a number to contact.

Scroll down and there are just as many posts by young backpackers – known as Working Holiday Makers – from around the world searching for picking jobs. This informal marketplace is how many temporary migrant workers find work on the blueberry farms in Coffs Harbour and the surrounding region. Coffs Harbour sits at the heart of Australia’s billion-dollar berry industry. More than 80 per cent of the country’s blueberries are grown here, alongside raspberries and blackberries.
But the farm owners aren’t posting these ads. Instead, a network of labour hire providers sits between growers and workers, targeting migrant workers with promises that often unravel in practice.

Digging deeper

Over the last eight months, under the auspices of the Law Society of NSW’s John Hennessy Scholarship, I have travelled through regional NSW to investigate how these unscrupulous labour hire providers operate in NSW’s horticulture sector, and what currently exists to regulate their practices.

As a Legal Aid lawyer, the stories of exploitation are familiar. Over five years in the Workplace Rights Service at Legal Aid NSW, I have assisted hundreds of vulnerable migrant workers across NSW to recover unpaid wages and confront unlawful treatment. We often encounter significant barriers when pursuing some employers who evade liability through illegal “phoenix” activity. They abandon companies laden with debts, only to reappear under new entities carrying on the same business.
This is not an abstract problem. For our clients, the risks are real. Many fear visa cancellation or harassment if they speak out, and financial ruin if they lose work. In the last year alone, my team and I recovered $1.5 million for workers. Even so, we know this represents only a fraction of the problem.

A landmark report released on May 2026 by the Migrant Justice Institute puts that scale into sharper focus. Surveying 10,000 migrant workers across multiple industries, it found that two thirds had been underpaid, with an estimated $61 million in unpaid wages every week.

This data highlights the scale of the problem. It also reveals what the report describes as an “architecture of exploitation”, where underpayment, insecure employment structures, and non-compliant practices are not isolated issues, but part of a single, interconnected system.

A system of exploitation

Take Emma*, from Taiwan. She told me (through a Mandarin interpreter) her experience after responding to a social media job ad for blueberry picking in Coffs Harbour. The ad was in Mandarin and promised accommodation and transport. Like many Working Holiday Makers, she needed to complete 88 days of farm work to secure a second-year visa, so she travelled to the Mid North Coast.

Her Australian dream quickly unravelled. She was forced to live with 16 other workers in a mouldy, overcrowded house in Macksville, a small town near Coffs Harbour. Each paid $150 per week to share a small room, with additional deductions for transport in the labour hire provider’s vans. Despite working long hours, she struggled to save any money.

Her pay fluctuated but never reached the minimum rates she was entitled to, because she was paid piece rates based on how many buckets of blueberries she picked. This is despite such arrangements being banned following union-led changes to the Horticulture Award in 2022. Emma did not even know the identity of her labour hire provider until she received her first payslip.

Workers came and went, quickly replaced through the same social media channels. Emma remained for several months before leaving with no savings and without the payslips she needed to support a visa extension. The payslips she did receive misrepresented the amount of work she performed and the amounts she should have been paid.

After receiving legal advice, she learned she had been underpaid thousands of dollars and had never been paid superannuation, despite amounts being recorded on her payslips. But the labour hire provider’s company was registered to a backpacker hostel in Coffs Harbour, and its director was overseas, making recovery effectively impossible.

At first glance, the labour hire provider’s operation appeared disorganised. In reality, it was anything but.

Each night, Emma and the other workers received detailed instructions allocating them to different blueberry farms across the region, identified by the farmer’s name and GPS location. They were grouped into vehicles and sent to multiple sites. Piece rates varied between farms and from day to day. Rosters were often issued late at night for early morning starts, depending on instructions from farm owners.

Emma worked across numerous blueberry farms in this way. Another worker described a near identical system used by a different labour hire provider, with rosters showing up to 50 workers at a time deployed across several blueberry farms. Both had secured their jobs through social media advertisements in their native languages.

Despite language barriers and constant movement between sites, one point of control was clear. Farm owners ultimately directed the work through the labour hire providers, using them as a front. Workers were closely monitored while picking, and complaints had consequences. One worker was dismissed and evicted from Emma’s accommodation after raising safety concerns about a farm owner.

This evidence reveals a system that is both informal and highly organised. Labour is recruited informally, often through social media. But it is deployed through coordinated structures across multiple farms, involving labour hire providers, supervisors, and host businesses. 
The result is a fragmented workforce with diffuse responsibility, where accountability is difficult to trace and harder to enforce. As the Migrant Justice Institute has observed, exploitation is not simply a gap in the system. In many cases, it is the system itself.

The growth of labour hire

Labour hire providers play a significant role in Australia’s workforce. According to the most recent ABS data, 351,000 people were employed through labour hire as at December 2025, representing 2.3 per cent of all employed people.

The horticulture sector stands out. It is both one of the fastest growing and most labour-intensive parts of Australian agriculture, and it relies heavily on labour hire to supply short-term, itinerant workers during harvest seasons.

The work itself drives that demand. Fruits like blueberries are highly perishable and must be handpicked. It is physically demanding, low-paid work largely performed by temporary migrant workers, many of whom are subject to visa conditions that restrict or direct their employment. In regional areas, growers often need to provide accommodation and transport as well as work. Many outsource this role to labour hire providers offering a “one-stop shop”, supplying labour, housing and logistics.

This system draws in multiple cohorts of migrant workers. In NSW, labour hire providers approved under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme recruit workers from Pacific countries and Timor-Leste. Alongside them are Working Holiday Makers and, in some cases, undocumented or disengaged workers, often engaged through less formal channels.

Labour hire providers are subject to the same legal obligations as other businesses, including workplace relations, taxation, superannuation and migration laws. Most comply. But in horticulture, a subset of providers systematically breaches these rules, exploiting workers who are often least able to enforce their rights.

This is not a new problem. Workers and advocates have been raising concerns for more than a decade. A series of state and federal inquiries has documented widespread exploitation of temporary migrant workers and consistently recommended stronger regulation of labour hire providers, particularly through licensing schemes that are designed to exclude non-compliant providers. Victoria, Queensland, the ACT and South Australia have since introduced such schemes.

NSW, however, remains one of the few states left without regulation. Since 2023, the NSW Government has been involved in efforts to develop a national, harmonised model. But that process collapsed late last year when Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania withdrew. In the absence of a national scheme, NSW has been left exposed.

As we approach the middle of 2026, pressure is building for a state-based response in NSW. The scale and urgency of the problem can no longer be ignored.

Not just a few bad blueberries

Recent headlines tell a familiar story. In the past few months, national media has reported on an NSW labour hire provider fined $540,000 for systematically underpaying 475 migrant workers and housing them in abhorrent conditions whilst working across multiple farms in NSW.

In the same period, major providers in the PALM scheme have also faced serious allegations. One, iComply, was removed from the scheme after entering liquidation owing workers up to $4 million in unpaid superannuation.

More recently, MADEC Australia, a large non-profit provider in PALM, was accused of providing overcrowded accommodation and overcharging workers in Corindi, near Coffs Harbour. Similar allegations have arisen before. In 2022, MADEC repaid $70,000 to PALM workers following earlier complaints.

Recent examples aside, concern about labour hire practices in NSW has been building for years. In late 2024, the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner estimated that more than 16,000 people in NSW were experiencing modern slavery, including forced labour and debt bondage. In horticulture, the risk is particularly acute. The Commissioner warned that the absence of labour hire regulation is encouraging non-compliant operators to relocate their operations to NSW from other states with stronger oversight.

In response, the NSW Parliament’s Modern Slavery Committee commenced an inquiry into risks facing temporary migrant workers in regional NSW. Over the past 18 months, it has received nearly 70 submissions and heard from dozens of witnesses. A consistent theme has emerged: the need for stronger regulation of labour hire providers.

This call extends beyond workers and their advocates. Industry bodies including the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance and Berries Australia have publicly supported reform. AFPA has described labour hire licensing as “one of the most critical” steps the NSW Government could take to address modern slavery risks.

Major buyers are also concerned. In the absence of a licensing scheme, supermarkets such as Woolworths rely heavily on industry accreditation bodies like Fair Farms and Sedex to audit their domestic supply chains. While these improve standards, they are not designed to prevent non-compliant operators from entering the market.

At the Committee’s final hearing in March 2026, Deputy Chair Jenny Leong MP pressed the NSW Minister for Industrial Relations and Safe Work, Sophie Cotsis, on the urgency of reform and the risks to migrant workers. The Minister acknowledged the issue and confirmed that the Government is considering options, including a code of practice for labour hire providers under work health and safety legislation in NSW. But she stopped short of committing to a labour hire licensing scheme, leaving a key question of the inquiry unresolved.

A patchwork of protection

This policy question reflects a deeper issue. What kind of regulation is best placed to deal with rogue labour hire providers and the businesses that rely on them?

Evidence from other jurisdictions suggests that even where labour hire licensing schemes exist, significant challenges remain. Victoria has had a licensing scheme since 2018, which is overseen by the Labour Hire Authority (LHA), yet exploitation remains entrenched in parts of its horticulture sector. Recent joint investigations by the Fair Work Ombudsman and the LHA found extremely high levels of non-compliance in prime growing regions, with 83 per cent of businesses in the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula regions and 70 per cent in Sunraysia failing to comply with workplace laws.

A licensing scheme does not eliminate exploitation. But it performs a very different function to the measures currently being considered in NSW. In evidence to the NSW Modern Slavery Committee, LHA’s Commissioner, Steve Dargavel, described the scheme as a “barrier to entry regulator.” Its purpose is not simply to respond to breaches, but to control who is allowed to operate in the market in the first place.

This distinction goes to the heart of the problem. The exploitation described in this article does not arise from isolated breaches. Rather, it is often embedded in complex structures that span multiple areas of regulation, including workplace law, tax, superannuation, migration, property law, and accommodation. These systems can involve proxy directors and interlinked entities, allowing operators to obscure responsibility and avoid detection.

Dargavel also told the Committee that the LHA’s intelligence shows serious avoidance structures operating from NSW, involving large numbers of labour hire providers and significant worker exploitation. Various operators who were refused licenses or had them cancelled in Victoria continue to operate lawfully in NSW, highlighting the regulatory gap between jurisdictions. 

In that context, responding to individual breaches is not enough. What is required is a regulatory model capable of seeing the system as a whole. As Dargavel explained, licensing provides a “single lens” to identify and address harms across these domains by targeting both the supply and demand sides of the market. 

Dargavel’s evidence highlights four things for NSW to consider. First, why a dedicated regulator is necessary. Without a licensing authority, responsibility remains fragmented across agencies, each dealing with a different aspect of the same problem, often too slowly to disrupt ongoing exploitation.

Second, how a licensing model should be structured. He cautioned against treating labour hire regulation as an additional function within an existing department, as is the case in some other states, instead emphasising the need for an independent, specialist regulator with its own powers, resourcing and intelligence capability.

Third, financial concerns should not be a barrier to reform. The LHA was established with a one-off investment of $8.5 million by the Victorian government and now operates on a fully cost-recovery basis funded by licence fees, without ongoing reliance on government funding.

Importantly, those establishment costs are not fixed. Dargavel advised that NSW could reduce costs further by adopting Victoria’s existing technology and regulatory architecture, which has already been developed and can be shared. This means a comparable scheme could be implemented in NSW more efficiently and at lower cost than Victoria’s original model.

Finally, Dargavel explained the limits of alternative regulatory approaches. He said NSW’s proposal of implementing a code of practice may help compliant businesses understand their obligations but are ineffective against operators who are structured to avoid the law. In his evidence, he noted that non-compliance becomes normalised in the absence of a licensing framework.

Barrier to entry

The Victorian licensing scheme operates in two ways. First, the LHA filters the supply of labour hire providers themselves. Under the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic) (Act), providers must be licensed and pass a “fit and proper” test before they can operate. In Victoria’s horticulture sector alone, hundreds of licences have been refused or cancelled, with 448 active providers remaining after 198 refusals and 259 cancellations. In effect, the scheme has halved the number of labour hire providers operating in the sector compared to what it otherwise would have been.

Second, the LHA regulates demand. Host businesses must only engage licensed providers or face substantial penalties. This creates a clear incentive for growers to verify the legitimacy of labour hire providers, supported by a publicly available register. 

For growers, this offers certainty, something currently missing in NSW. Without a licensing scheme, growers have limited visibility over whether a labour hire provider is compliant across different legal regimes. Licensing shifts that burden upstream by excluding known non-compliant operators from the market and making re-entry more difficult. NSW’s lack of regulation effectively keeps the door wide open for non-compliant operators to enter and continue operating, even where they have been excluded from other jurisdictions.

As the Victorian example demonstrates, a licensing scheme does not eliminate exploitation. But it changes the structure of the market. The practical effect of this model can be seen in the enforcement activity of the LHA. 

Each year, the LHA cancels hundreds of licences and refuses further applications across various industries, while imposing conditions where compliance risks can be managed. It has secured millions of dollars in penalties against non-compliant providers and acted against sophisticated operations, including prosecution of unlicensed operators, disruption of alleged money laundering syndicates, and action against providers attempting to evade the system.

These interventions are ongoing. Recent amendments to the Act, commencing on 1 June 2026, will strengthen the “fit and proper person” test and expand the regulator’s ability to consider a labour hire provider’s compliance across a broader range of laws, including corporate, consumer, and financial regulation. Labour hire providers must also demonstrate financial viability to obtain or retain a licence.

Taken together, these features illustrate the core function of a licensing scheme. While it does not remove all risk, it creates a regulatory framework capable of identifying and excluding the most harmful actors before they enter the market, while creating incentives for compliant businesses to participate on a level playing field.

Regulating the system, not just the symptoms

Licensing must sit within a broader package. NSW should strengthen enforcement of accommodation standards where housing is tied to work. It should also work more closely with local councils and relevant federal agencies to better understand migrant worker flows in regional NSW and target services to the right places. 

Sustained funding for the legal assistance sector is also essential, because wage recovery and rights enforcement remain difficult without legal representation. The establishment of the Refugee and Migrant Workers Centre with Unions NSW is a welcome step and will complement the longstanding role of community legal centres and Legal Aid NSW in regional NSW.

Overall, a national labour hire scheme would be preferable as it would provide consistency across jurisdictions and reduce incentives for bad actors to move where the regulation is weakest. But with national harmonisation stalled, NSW should implement its own scheme now and harmonise later. 

No time to lose

As Dargavel’s evidence makes clear, in the absence of a licensing scheme, systemic non-compliance is likely to continue in NSW largely without effective interruption. Stories like Emma’s happen every day.

History suggests that regulation often follows tragedy. In the United Kingdom, a licensing scheme for labour hire providers was established only after at least 22 Chinese workers drowned while harvesting cockles in 2004. NSW should not wait for a comparable disaster before acting. Farm work is already dangerous enough with SafeWork NSW reporting 11 workplace fatalities across NSW’s agricultural industry in the last year.

NSW can close the front door to the worst operators, improve certainty for growers, and reduce the risk of both exploitation and avoidable harm. It does not need the Modern Slavery Committee’s forthcoming report to know that the time to act is now.

*A pseudonym has been used