Public Sector Workforce Recognition
[11.56 a.m.]
Ms BURNET (Clark) - Deputy Speaker, I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for bringing this MPI to the Chamber. It's about public sector negotiations and there is no harm for anybody in this place to talk about how good or bad the public sector negotiations have been.
I'd like to make a few comments in response to the Deputy Premier. Deputy Premier, your government needs to take some responsibility in relation to how poorly many of the public sector negotiations are going. We are seeing them stalling and industrial action taken in a number of professions and it is an indictment because there is so much at stake in relation to getting a good outcome for these public sector negotiations.
I will keep my examples to the health sector. Some might describe it as naivety of the government but others might describe it as bloody-mindedness. The government is taking an intractable position to negotiations at a time arguably when health workers are at their lowest ebb, certainly the lowest that I've seen for health workers in Tasmania. When staff recruitment and retention is extremely challenging and the cost of locums is out of control, the government is adding insult to injury with these protracted negotiations. For staff at our hospitals and community health centres across this state in various sectors, it's simply untenable for them. It truly is driving staff out of the sector and it is the patients who suffer. The long-term cost of this will mount as the exodus will need to be filled with locums. We've heard that the nursing locum bill is going up and up. It's so expensive and that's partly because there is not the industrial security that public service nurses require.
Industrial action is not taken lightly. Most state governments have tried to suppress the wages of their employees, but nowhere have we seen these effects as savage as they are in Tasmania and not, I would say, any worse than they are now. We need a strong public sector, we need a government who will negotiate in good faith, and it is questionable whether that is occurring in good faith for many of the protracted negotiations that are occurring right now.
The government pretends to look at the bottom line but, as it was when I worked at the Royal Hobart Hospital some years ago now, wage negotiations that are not done in good faith have huge ramifications for the workplace. Nobody wants to take industrial action. Nobody wants to be leaving their roles to stand on the streets and make their voice heard because the government isn't hearing them. Tasmanians value our nurses, doctors and allied health workers, our teachers and other public sector workers. But the government, according to how they're negotiating, would seem does not. We need negotiations done in good faith for a strong public service to work for all Tasmanians.