Lindenow Valley farmer Kane Busch relies on more than a dozen migrant workers each year to harvest his broccoli, beetroot and cabbage.

But as migration becomes a political football, there is concern about what the future holds. 

The debate on cutting immigration numbers may have been triggered by One Nation, with the Coalition bringing up the rear, but Labor is in power.

And in mid-September, Federal Immigration Minister Tony Burke announced the government would implement new limits on the Working Holiday Maker visa by introducing quotas for second and third year visa extensions.

But Mitchell River farmer Busch is “already experiencing lengthy delays in visas at the moment” for his pickers.

“[It’s] particularly concerning. Our 13 guys are due to come over in two weeks' time, but they haven't even got the visas yet to be granted. We're just waiting and hoping.”

Busch said there wasn’t a pool of local workers available to fill the number of jobs required.

Read the full story here.

Latrobe City councillor Dale Harriman remembers how devastated the community was when roughly 750 workers were made redundant in the 2017 Hazelwood power plant closure.

“It’s hard for a community to lose so many jobs, lose so much income going into the local economy,” Harriman told the Monitor.

Engie had announced the imminent closure of the 50-year-old Hazelwood power plant in November 2016 and four months later, in March 2017, it was done.

"We learnt the lessons of the unplanned closure of Hazelwood power station and the devastating effect that had, and is still having, on this community."

Harriman said he is hopeful Energy Australia, Latrobe City Council and state and federal governments can avoid making the same mistakes with the planned closure of the Yallourn coal-fired power station in mid-2028.

But a report from the federal government’s Net Zero Economy Authority (NZEA) says Energy Australia will be able to “at best” provide future employment to approximately 24 percent of its Yallourn workforce at the existing site, and those roles may also be short contracts.

What’s happening: In March 2021, Energy Australia said it would cease operating its coal-fired power station at Yallourn in mid-2028. This has given the company and government bodies a seven-year period to prepare the roughly 450 workers for new jobs and careers.

“The clock’s ticking - it's less than two years away now,” Mining & Energy Union Victorian District President, Andy Smith, told the Monitor. “The workers on site that I speak to are saying there’s a lot of uncertainty about what life looks like for them after the closure.”

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Around the Mitchell River floodplain to the west of Bairnsdale is the Lindenow Valley, a highly fertile agricultural region sometimes referred to as Gippsland’s food bowl. 

The productive farmland is a powerhouse of vegetable production and helps Gippsland produce about 27 percent of the state's vegetable produce.

But Regional Development Officer for VegNET Gippsland, Amanda Gould, told the Monitor “the cost of labour, fertiliser, chemicals, energy, machinery, packing and freight are all growing exponentially and all of that comes off the farmers bottom line”.

The result? “Being profitable trying to get stuff to market is becoming increasingly hard.”

Read the full story here.

Do you know who owns your local pub?

My colleague Archie Milligan from the National Account looked into the Australian hospitality conglomerates that own hundreds of pubs around the country, and whether they’re turning a trip to your local into a generic experience.

Take a look at Archie’s video below.