The NSW Government must commit to growing the public sector at next month’s budget if it is to keep up with the demand for essential services.
This is one of the key findings revealed in Keeping Pace: The Impact of Population Growth on NSW Public Services, a report launched at the PSA’s annual conference in Sydney today.
Through the Autumn of 1997, Adelaide residents were holding their noses. A nasty smell set in for three months to become known as Adelaide’s ‘big pong’.
It emerged the pong had been caused by a major breakdown at a major Adelaide sewage plant. The treatment lagoons were overflowing and the systems in place for breaking down the city’s raw sewage weren’t working.
Adelaide residents suffered nausea and respiratory problems. Businesses suffered as people stayed home.
I used to think that having a Labor government meant our jobs were safe. I’ve been working as a power network maintainer for 12 years and I’ve seen first hand the deterioration of NSW public services under Labor.
Not only have workplace conditions and safety suffered but the threat of privatisation still looms over our heads. Being in the public sector used to mean having your job for life. It used to mean you knew where you stood. But where do we stand now?
Keep power in public hands
Launching the Better State campaign in Newcastle today was a great experience.
Nurses, police officers, teachers, council workers and employees of utilities and government departments across the Hunter gathered to kick off a campaign that puts the public services essential to our growing state front and centre.
Rate pegging is a practice unique to NSW and imposed on our 152 councils as a way of keeping rates low. While it may sound like a good thing for rate-payers, in reality it is an out-dated model that strangles Local Government and restricts councils’ ability to deliver quality local services. It’s time rate pegging was abolished.
Rubbish collection is the latest service our state government wants to flog off for a quick cash injection.
Dumped: waste management goes private
But the proposal to sell WSN Environmental Solutions, a government-owned company that services local councils with pick-up, recycling and waste management, would push up costs for ratepayers and threaten garbos’ jobs.
Most of us don’t think much about our rubbish after we throw it in the bin.
Here in NSW, manufacturing workers build everything from passenger train carriages through to massive naval air warfare destroyers.
Support the campaign: www.buildthemhere.com.au
But in recent years, more and more of our transport manufacturing contracts have gone to low-cost overseas competitors.
Buses and rail rolling stock, along with all sorts of other heavy equipment, are commonly imported from China in tube or flat-pack form. After they’re shipped over, the skilled NSW tradespeople who used to build these buses and trains from scratch now assemble and fit them out.
This trend puts valuable jobs, skills and apprenticeship opportunities at risk.
The NSW Government’s budget surplus averaging $800 million each year for the next four years would be better spent improving the public services that have been razed by years of cost cutting.
As the NSW economy recovers and major infrastructure projects begin to take off, it is concerning that no efforts are being made by the Government to keep up with demand.
Imagine if in NSW we had a public service that was properly resourced, where good staff were appreciated, and positions weren’t left unfilled for months at a time.
As 2010 gets underway, I’m hoping we will finally see change in the way the State Government approaches public services.
Stop the Cell Off Rally: Time to invest in better services, not privatise them
