Page 2877 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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What did the CPSU then say? Mr McDevitt said:
The Government is well versed in using the big stick in relation to threatening jobs if you don’t accept an inferior pay offer.
How many times have we been in this place, members, and heard the lines from the Labor Party and the Greens about the nasty Liberals and what they are like with public sector jobs? The truth of the matter is that once you take away the fear and smear from Andrew Barr, Katy Gallagher and the rest of them, when you actually listen to what the unions are experiencing right now, they are experiencing a government that has given them an inferior pay offer, that, in the words of the union, has shafted them and is then using a big stick in relation to threatening jobs if they do not accept an inferior pay offer. Extraordinary stuff, isn’t it?
If you also look at the budget, Mr Assistant Speaker, in some detail, you will see that there are job cuts in the budget. There are quite a number of job cuts in the budget. There are movements around the budget, and there are some increases in some areas. But it was the government members and the union that were saying that the Liberals would cut jobs out of the community sector, CSD. And what happened? Thirty-eight jobs were cut by the government. There is a cut of 100 jobs in Education. So if you are a public sector employee—and this is the point that the union has a real problem with—there might be a couple more nurses—
Mr Barr: A couple!
Mr Hanson: but unless you are going to be able to retrain as a nurse pretty quickly, you are out of a job. That is what the government is doing.
You may well raise the question of nurses, Mr Barr, because Jenny Miragaya, from the Australian Nursing Federation, described the pay offer that the government made, that the health minister made, as insulting to nurses. I get these accusations from the Labor members opposite, but what we are seeing is what the unions think. Now we see that the nurses union and the CPSU think that they are shafting their members, they are insulting their members and they are threatening their members. That is the reality of what is happening. Ignore the fear and smear that you are going to get from the Labor Party on this. Jenny Miragaya said on 29 May:
In the last three rounds of EBA negotiations every time we’ve been told that they are in dire straits because of the global economic crisis. It’s wearing very thin as an argument.
Indeed Mr Barr was in here earlier saying what a wonderful job he is doing with the economy and what a wonderful job he is doing with the budget. It is all roses. But it seems that it is a different story when they are actually going to the nurses and insulting the nurses by saying, “The budget’s in a terrible position, we can’t possibly give you any more money.” We know for a fact that there is approximately $250 million a year more every year available that they could be paying.
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