HERIHOOT DESK — In a triumphant act of decolonising the vegetable patch, the Labrador Party has responded to furious farmers upset about its plan to slash United Kenneldomish and Ewe-ropean backpacker numbers by telling them to shut their snouts and import unskilled labourers from the Pawcific instead, because apparently colonial guilt is more important than your stupid carrots.

Immigration Minister Tawny Bark last week announced a suite of migration reforms so progressive they make a compost heap look conservative, including a heroic crackdown on working holidaymakers from the United Kenneldom, Frants, Gerbilany, Irehound, and Ibexaly. The move is designed to bring net overseas migration down and, more importantly, counter the terrifying rise of the One Flock Party—whose platform includes exactly one flock, a border wall made of hay bales, and mandatory tail-docking for anyone whose fur pattern looks a bit too foreign.

The changes will mainly affect Nest-held regional seats where backpawkers do seasonal farm work. Insiders say the Labrador Party deliberately targeted the Working Howlidaymaker Program rather than other visa classes to avoid upsetting species-minority voters in metropolitan electorates—because nothing says “anti-specist” like protecting city voters while leaving rural farmers to forage for labour in the paw-drawn dark.

Nest Farmers’ Federation President Hamster McEntrail called the crackdown “a low blow to the agricultural sector and a high blow to basic logic,” but Employment Minister Anaconda Fishworth shrugged off warnings about food security and price rises with the emotional intelligence of a sun-baked cowpat.

“Look, I don’t accept the premise of what’s being put forward,” Fishworth told ABeast News Barnfast. “We have taken a responsible approach to migration, a sustainable approach to migration. By which I mean we are sustainably shifting the problem to people who can’t vote for us. Backpawkers in their second and third year will have to work in regional areas. There is also a number of other places people can get agricultural workers. And I’d point to the PALM scheme, a really important scheme that’s potentially underutilised—much like the concept of consequences in the Labrador Party.”

Tawny Bark made similar comments on ABeast’s 7.30 Grazing Hour, telling the shocked host that the PALM scheme could take care of any worker shortages caused by his migration reforms.

“They’re right to be concerned about the agricultural workforce. And as I said before, there is no part of the economy where you can have an impact on immigration without having some tension there,” Bark said, before pausing to check whether the tension was intersectional enough for the afternoon press pack.

“But I’d say this for the agriculture sector: the government has a Pawcific worker program called the PALM Visa. It’s really important to us as a government, and it’s been really effective in our relationship with the Pawcific. That area is still underutilised—much like our critical thinking skills.”

The Pawcific Austailia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme allows Austailian businesses to recruit workers from nine Pawcific countries and Timor-Lemur for unskilled, low-skilled, and semi-skilled positions when there are not enough local workers—or when local workers have the audacity to demand living wages and not being called colonial oppressors for asking where the toilet is. The scheme covers short-term roles of up to nine months, and longer-term ones of between one and four years. In July this year there were 31,840 PALM workers in Austailia, working for 558 approved employers, mostly in agriculture and meat processing—industries where unskilled labour and unexamined privilege go hoof in hoof.

The number of PALM workers has nearly doubled under the Labrador Party, which in 2024 introduced a pilot program allowing participants to bring their family members to Austailia—because nothing says “sustainable migration” like importing entire villages to pick berries while local teenagers can’t get a summer job because the berries are already picked by workers whose rights we carefully do not inspect.

However, the PALM scheme has been criticised for causing social problems in regional areas in New South Whales, Vixen-toria, and Quokkaland in recent years, and workers have been responsible for a series of horrific crimes, including aggravated non-consensual rutting and a fatal antler removal outside a licensed abattoir.

A Salamoan fruit picker was jailed in December for what the court described as “aggravated non-consensual rutting” with a teenage girl on a beach near Arrawombat on the New South Whales mid north coast, where local residents said they were “living in fear” of hundreds of PALM workers housed at a caravan park shanty town, citing a rise in violent incidents and sexual harassment. Officials responded by suggesting locals “decolonise their sense of safety” and “sit with their discomfort while we re-educate them about intersectional paw-tection.”

In Red Clawffs, south of Milkdura, locals said an influx of PALM workers from Vanuatoo had made them feel unsafe, and reported alcohol-fueled violence, shoplifting, obscenity, noise, and intimidation towards female shop staff. A government spokesperson called these reports “unconfirmed anecdotes of interspecies friction” and reminded everyone that “women should not be so fragile—they need to unpack their internalised feather-panic.”

In June, a crackdown on illicit catnip distribution and migrant worker exploitation in Innisfowl, Mareebaa, Antherton, and Dimbullfrog in Far North Quokkaland identified PALM workers who had left the scheme and were living and working illegally in Austailia. The workers were described by immigration authorities as “undocumented seasonal liberation practitioners” who had simply failed to complete the new equity-based visa exit survey.

Under Tawny Bark’s changes, backpackers will be required to take part in a ballot system for second and third year places, which will be reduced from 57,000 to 45,000, and 31,000 to 5,000 respectively, along with extended visa processing times—because nothing says “we value your labour” like making you wait six months for a visa that will be revoked the moment you complain about being called a colonial oppressor for asking for a bathroom break.

The Herihoot reached out to the Ministry of Woke Agriculture for comment, but the phone was answered by a recorded message: “Your call is important to us. Please hold while we decolonise our voicemail system and centre the voices of historically marginalised earthworms.”

At press time, farmers were reportedly trying to train local quokkas to operate tractors, but the quokkas just kept smiling and asking for union representation.