TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS FIRST EDITION WITH LAURA JAYES
WEDNESDAY, 8 APRIL 2020
SUBJECTS: JobKeeper; teachers; casual workers and wage subsidies; childcare; university support.
LAURA JAYES, HOST: Let's go live now back to Canberra and Shadow Education Minister, Tanya Plibersek joins me this morning. Thank you for your time. First of all, before we get to your portfolio area, the JobKeeper package - $130 billion dollars worth of measures will pass Parliament today. I know Labor has been frustrated by some of the measures particularly when it comes to casual workers. So, I'm assuming that you are going to wave this through but move some amendments?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND TRAINING: The first thing to say is of course we are very happy to see wages subsidies. We have been calling for wages subsidies as a response to the economic crisis brought on by Coronavirus from the very beginning. Labor and the Union movement together have been calling for wages subsidies are we are pleased to see that the Government has agreed to those. What we are worried about are the very, very many workers who miss out on this. Well over one million casuals will miss out on this because they haven't been with the same employer for the required amount of time. In my own portfolio, I am very worried about casual teaching staff and casual University and TAFE staff as well. That's a huge proportion of the teaching workforce.
JAYES: Yes, can I just ask you on that. Yeah particularly, this is something that Tony Burke raised yesterday as well Tanya Plibersek. So if you are a casual teacher, are you not employed by the Education Department therefore coming under the umbrella of one employer or is it each individual school?
PLIBERSEK: So the different states are dealing with this slightly differently. The ACT Government, for example, have said ‘that's it we are going to support casual workers, our casual teaching workforce, we are just going to look after them in the same way as other teachers’. But when you take, for example non-government schools, we know that one diocese in the New South Wales Catholic system has already let 300 teachers go. There is one school in Queensland that has let 100 casual teachers go. Many of these are people who have been working with that system or in that local area for years or, in some cases, even decades. I have been contacted by a lot of very distressed teachers. Many of them I have to say, are mums who are returning to work after a few years out of the workforce caring for children. They go back as casuals. We have depended on them in the lead up to schools reducing the number of students on campus. In all those weeks when COVID-19 was a health threat, we were asking casual teachers to walk into classrooms and to be part of our front line response to the virus. And now, when they need us, we're turning our backs on them - it's just not fair.
JAYES: Well look, I have heard similar stories when it comes to the childcare sector as well. There was a package announced by the Government that came into effect Sunday night. Many childcare workers are on visas because it is an area where, I guess, we need those skills from overseas. So therefore, these workers are not eligible for the JobKeeper or JobSeeker allowance. Now, Dan Tehan and the Education Department say they are going to try to sort this out, they are going to work with individual centres and companies. But has that been something that has come across your desk as well?
PLIBERSEK: Well, there is a couple of things about Childcare. There is a lot of confusion. At first it seemed that council childcare centres would not be eligible for this support, I hope that has been fixed now. There's confusion about whether family day care is eligible. There's this issue with workers who are on visas because it is an area of labour shortage. Until recently, we have seen labour shortages in this area. And we also have other industries that similarly rely on visa holders because of skill shortages that will be very hard hit. The hospitality industry is a huge employer in my electorate, I've been speaking to my local businesses who tell me how reliant they've been on students, international students, or chefs from overseas - we've had a huge shortage of chefs for years now in Australia. None of those workers are eligible and it will mean the closure of some of these hospitality businesses probably for good. They won't be able to cope in these circumstances. So you've seen with teachers, with universities, with TAFE, with childcare, with hospitality there's a broad range of the workforce that won't actually be supported by the measures that were introduced today. So we welcome the approach of wages subsidies but we are very worried about some of the exclusions. So, today of course we'll be supporting the legislation but we will be seeking to push these changes in the Parliament and also it's worth noting, Laura, the Treasurer has given himself enormous discretion to continue to include other groups in these arrangements in coming weeks. We will continue to push for workers that are left out of these arrangements to be included.
JAYES: Let's talk about universities because they are certainly bleeding cash at the moment, around the order of $4 billion already. They're asking for a package, I believe they are talking to the Government, do you know the nature of what they require?
PLIBERSEK: Well, the universities have said that having access to JobKeeper payments on the same terms as other not-for-profit organisations or charities would be a lifeline for them. They are also of course very worried about some students that don't have any income support, that really are suffering at the moment, really have nowhere to turn. So they're talking to the universities about support for students as well. But just think about universities for a moment. This is 240,000 staff across Australia, in recent times they have been very reliant on income from international students, most of that income is used to support the research effort which is, you know, we found Gardasil vaccine that way, we found antibiotics here, we found influenza vaccines in the past, of course universities are playing a huge role in the research that will find treatments and a vaccine for Covid-19, but they can't if they've got no money coming in. And a large proportion of their teaching staff and also admin staff, librarians, the people who do food and beverage, they're all casuals. And when you look across the university sector they employ, as I said, almost a quarter of a million people, but 14,000 of those people are in regional areas. You take a few hundred jobs out of a regional area that has a huge economic impact on that area. We've even had universities saying they might fold altogether. We can't afford that, we can't afford it because of the loss of research, we can't afford it because of the loss of jobs right across Australia and we can't afford it because universities that right now are training the nurses, the doctors, the epidemiologists, the scientists that will handle this pandemic and the next one. We already see universities talking to hospitals about how senior students, people who are very well advanced in their medical degrees or nursing degrees can go into hospitals and help on the front line, we have to support our institutions.
JAYES: Well the Government says it’s not set and forget, so we perhaps await further measures - who knows. Tanya Plibersek, appreciate your time.
PLIBERSEK: I hope so. Thanks Laura.
ENDS
