Spotlight on: Emma Field
“It was one of those stories where you just can’t sleep at night.” Meet the co-winner of the 2018 Award for industrial reporting.
Helen O’Flynn & Alan Knight Award for Best Industrial Reporting
Emma Field and Vanessa Marsh, The Weekly Times, The Courier-Mail, Townsville Bulletin, Bundaberg NewsMail and The Rural Weekly, “Pacific worker program death count”
A background in and passion for regional Australia drives award-winning reporter Emma Field, who shared the 2018 award for Best Industrial Reporting with Vanessa Marsh. Emma has been reporting on foreign farm workers for some years; here, she takes us behind her winning story “Pacific worker program death count”.
How did you get started on this story?
I have done stories on foreign workers on farms for more than four years. I was in a Victorian Government inquiry in Mildura and a witness there was speaking about an incident that had happened in the region. Because I had done some work in the area I understood he was talking about the Seasonal Worker Program, and I was really interested. I knew it was government-run program and anything managed by government where people are being mistreated — there’s a story there.
That was probably two years ago. I followed it from there with a range of different stories.
The number of people who died on the Seasonal Worker Program was actually revealed in Senate estimates. All the information give in these hearings by the Department is official information. And it was only because I bothered to read those transcripts, and realised how shocking this was that I knew it was a big deal. So I went to my contacts and found people who would know about it, to develop the story and to put a name and face to all of these Pacific workers who had died.
What impact did the story have?
When I worked on this story I was a section editor at the Weekly Times, responsible for putting out two pages of content a week. So I was really juggling that responsibility on top of what I call ‘investigative work’. It was one of those stories where you just can’t sleep at night thinking about what happens. I have always found it a real challenge — unless you’re in a purely investigative role where you can just do that stuff all the time I think this kind of work just takes as long as it takes.
The challenge with this story is getting people to talk. You have foreign workers who don’t necessarily speak the language very well, they don’t necessarily trust authorities because the countries they live in the authorities are very corrupt or it is just not the culture to report things like this.
There is also fear that they will get sent home and never come back on the program. They take the jobs because these countries are really poor — that’s the reason this program exists. Finding those people was really challenging and so was speaking to families of people who have died because they still don’t have answers about it, so it was hard for them to trust us to tell the story of their loved one.
I’ve been doing stories on foreign workers in Australia for at least four years and a lot has changed. Four Corners did an exposé, they used a lot of the stuff that I’d already done, and with a million people watching, the government took notice and they made a lot of changes. I felt like I had a part in that. There have been legislative changes, tougher federal workplace laws, there’s been three states now who have licensed labour hire firms. That is one of the biggest problems for foreign workers, there was a loophole that closed which allows backpackers to be forced to work for free to get a visa extension. At a local level where I live now there’s a whole bunch of illegal rooming houses which were shut down, which were used to house foreign workers.
The Pacific workers, they come from very poor countries. Often they take out loans to get themselves to Australia, their family is at home relying on the income, and when they’re not paid properly or underpaid it’s just devastating for them. They don’t understand it and they really appreciate your listening to them. One time I put in an enquiry to the ATO about a Fijian man who hadn’t been paid superannuation by his approved government employer, and essentially he ended up being paid only because I put in an inquiry and the ATO followed it up. So on a personal level you get stories like that.
What made you want to be a journalist?
I career-changed into journalism about a decade ago. I worked in agriculture and also as a public servant. I just knew there was a more exciting job out there, so I moved to Melbourne to study journalism and I haven’t looked back.
I love researching topics, I love talking about issues and ideas, and I really like talking to people and hearing their stories. I find it such a privilege to tell stories. People really do invite you into their lives and put trust in you.
What are you most proud of about the stories you’ve told?
I’m really passionate about regional Australia, I’ve always worked in or around the sector, or lived in the country. So I am really proud to spend my whole career providing information to regional communities, to farmers about issues that really affect country Australians. There’s a really big gap between people who live in metro areas and the people who live in country areas, and I think that’s really sad. So I like to think that I’m hoping to close that gap a little bit.
What’s your message to Australians about why quality journalism needs their support?
I think more than ever we just need journalists out in the field chasing information that the everyday person is just too busy to find out — government decisions, the way businesses operate, where your food comes, from, it all matters.
For me personally I think the more we have journalists in regional areas the better. There are less and less of us; quality journalists are needed everywhere, not only in the cities, because the country people matter too.
Emma Field is a regional news journalist with ABC Gippsland in eastern Victoria. Prior to joining the ABC earlier this year she was a reporter with Australia’s highest selling agricultural newspaper, The Weekly Times. During her seven years with the paper she served as the Gippsland reporter and the grains section editor. Her expose of overseas worker exploitation in the agricultural and food processing sector has been groundbreaking, resulting in a series of inquiries and government regulation changes and winning her a Walkley in 2015.
Follow her on Twitter: @SaysEmmaField
See all the winners of the Walkley Mid-Year Awards here.
*Interview by Gemma Courtney, The Walkley Foundation
The Helen O’Flynn & Alan Knight Award for Best Industrial Reporting is supported by Ai Group, Australian Super, Unions NSW, ACTU, UTS and MEAA
