Today in Parliament, Abigail contributed to a debate calling on the NSW Government to apply lessons from addressing teacher shortages to the wider public sector, advocating for fair pay and respect to prevent further workforce crises.
Abigail said:
On behalf of The Greens, I indicate that we do not oppose the motion. I participated in two inquiries into the New South Wales teacher shortages, and the clear and obvious finding of those reports was that the status of the teaching profession has been consistently devalued, and that teachers and school staff have been overworked and underpaid. Inadequate resourcing, excessive workloads and uncompetitive salaries have led teachers to leave the workforce in droves. It was obvious that what was needed was a dramatic, transformative re-baselining of teacher salaries and conditions in order to address the systemic drivers of the teacher workforce attraction and retention crisis.
Miracles do happen, and so it appeared the New South Wales Government had listened, delivering a big uplift to teacher salaries. By all reports, that has stemmed the tide, with teachers no longer fleeing the profession in pursuit of liveable wages and stable working conditions, which is good. But as the months since have passed, we have begun to wonder if the Labor Government actually understood the fundamental problem at all or if it just lucked into a solution without being able to show its working, because it appears incapable of recognising the pattern and replicating its performance.
Look around and members will see a public sector in New South Wales still reeling from a decade of wage suppression, with workers still fleeing the State and the public sector in droves. There is an attraction and retention crisis across transport, community services and, not least, the public health system. Public health workers in this State are overworked and underpaid. In fact, they are the lowest paid public health workers in Australia in the most expensive State to live in. The logical outcome of that is that existing workers will leave the workforce and new workers will be harder to attract, resulting in chronic overwork and unsafe staffing ratios. When one can see the emotional and physical toll that puts on frontline workers, why would anyone enter a health system that pays around 18 per cent less than other States? We are in a vicious doom loop of vacancies, overwork and resignations. Where have we heard that one before?
It does not take a brain surgeon to decipher the pattern, so one would hope the Government would have learnt the lesson. Do not use bully boy tactics, media spinning and courtroom battles to solve a demoralisation, burnout and a "not enough money to make ends meet" crisis. Solve it by paying workers what they are worth and by respecting them as experts in their profession who act not only for themselves but also for the good of the people they are responsible for caring for.
Make no mistake: Large swathes of our public workforce are in crisis. Relevantly, the word "crisis" comes to us from medicine. Hippocrates conceptualised crisis as the singular moment in an illness when the patient would either begin to recover or ultimately die. That is the crisis point, and it is worth identifying because what the treating doctor does or does not do at that tipping point is ultimately consequential. Thankfully, our teachers appear to be making a recovery. But our public health system and other public sector workers remain at that crisis point, and the prognosis is grim. How will this Government respond?
Read the full debate in Hansard here.
19 February 2025