Stop the mental anguish for farmers over borders says grain harvester chief

Rod Gribble, president of Australian Custom Harvesters, said the ag ministers need to "pull their finger out" and urgently resolve the issue with a bumper winter grains harvest on the horizon.

He said many contract grain harvesters had endured a number of tough years because of drought and had been hoping to get their businesses back on track this year.

Farmers with properties and businesses on both sides of state borders were also caught up in the mess and some would probably break the law if politicians and their bureaucrats didn't find a speedy resolution.

Mr Gribble was unimpressed with the NSW Government's latest concession to allow Victorian farmers, contractors and agricultural employees living within 100km of the border to cross into NSW without quarantining in Sydney for two weeks.

They would be restricted to working 100km inside NSW but would be able to venture beyond that limit if they were successful in getting another special permit which would be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Mr Gribble said the move was "illogical" as rural Victoria was largely free of COVID and the fine details of the decision were still not clear.

But NSW Farmers welcomed a new permit system for farmers and agricultural workers who reside outside the Border Region Zone in Victoria.

"This is a good step in reducing the uncertainty and we strongly encourage the Queensland Government to follow the NSW leadership as we all seek to operate in COVID Safe workplaces," NSW Farmers president James Jackson said.

"With a bumper grain harvest looming in northern NSW, similar steps must be made urgently to allow the movement of workers, contractors and machinery across the Queensland border," he said.

Mr Gribble said many contractors and growers, especially in NSW, hadn't had a crop for four years and were under "huge" financial and emotional stress.

"There are people who have had one crop in seven years."

They all needed a big harvest this year to stop their businesses and themselves from going over the edge, he said.

Mr Gribble, a contractor and farmer from Yenda in the NSW Riverina, said his organisation had been trying to make politicians understand the need for a special border pass for essential agricultural industries.

Recipients of these ag border passes would need to provide proof of their identification and home address, be covid free (applicants from Victoria may need to undergo a coronavirus test) and keep a diary of where they went and what they did.

"Ag ministers need to pull their fingers out and talk to the chief medical officers to say 'this is what is required', surely there can be a way of working around this."

"But commonsense seems to have left the building, it probably left decades ago," Mr Gribble said.

He said farming bodies like Agforce, the Victorian Farmers Federation, NSW Farmers, and Grain Producers Australia, had all been trying to push politicians to find answers.

As it stands harvester contractors in Victoria can now get their headers across the NSW border on a truck but staff had to travel to Melbourne, fly to Sydney and spend two weeks in isolation in a hotel or motel, he said.

This would actually increase the risk of COVID infection, he said, because people would be leaving areas without the virus to travel to Melbourne, a disease hotspot.

"There needs to be clear and concise descriptions and exemptions of whatever it is going to be (for border crossing) so everybody knows what it is," he said.

"This may all go away or it could get a lot bloody worse."

He said a number of NSW contractors were looking to go to Queensland to look after long-standing clients but Agforce had told him there wasn't much chance at the moment of Victorian contractors being allowed into the sunshine state.

Mr Gribble said harvest labour was also shaping as another headache with so few overseas backpackers in the country.

Young, NSW, contractor Lindsay Northcott this week planned to cross the border to talk with his Queensland clients.

He said he would do everything possible to honour commitments to long-standing Queensland clients but would not bee seeking other work in the state.

"The whole COVID thing is just another complexity on what is now going to be a reasonably large harvest probably in NSW and Victoria," he said.

"We haven't had a large harvest for quite a number of years so resources are already stretched."

Many contractors historically had also used overseas labour which would be a scarce resource this year, he said.

Kelvin Bella, who operates Farm Central based at St George which links harvester contractors with farmers along the eastern states, said some headers had been transported from interstate into central Queensland about six weeks ago.

He said there had been strong demand for contract harvesters in north west and western NSW which has enjoyed a bumper season.

Last Friday he had sent out details of a job to strip 2428 hectares on the NSW-Queensland border but only got six replies.

"That's starting to get into a scary situation. I spoke to a few farmers along the Queensland side who haven't got their full quota of headers and I think they believe they may able to get them from the north coming down. I can't see that happening," he said.

"There is no reality to what Queensland Government is doing at the moment.

"If they hinder farmers getting this crop off and it rains and that crop gets left in the paddock they really have to weight up the mental health side of that.

"There is a can of worms coming if they don't let contractors into Queensland if they are needed."