Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Victorian public service enterprise bargaining agreement

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:33): (1100) My adjournment is for the Minister for Women, and it concerns the Victorian public service enterprise agreement which came into force last week. It is an extraordinary document and also an incredibly expensive one. Few pieces of paper, even in Labor’s Victoria, will end up costing us more, and it says a lot about the government which signed it. Specifically, it reveals their political weakness – their factional debts, their economic recklessness and their ideological obsessions. This year’s budget showed public sector wages more than doubling since Labor assumed office. In just 10 years they blew out from $18.8 billion to $36.5 billion. This agreement will make it worse, with four guaranteed 3 per cent pay rises, the first even backdated to May, just five months after the last salary increase in the 2020 agreement.

Then there is the cost-of-living payment for everyone: $5600. For an average employee, that is more 7 per cent this year. What about the cost of living for non-government employees? Not only will they miss out on this $5600, but they will have to pay for it themselves through taxes. Another gem is the mobility payment. This annual payment ranges from $700 to $3400 in recognition that job specs may sometimes change. That is just reality for everyone else – normal everyday life – but here the Victorian government is paying all its employees a sizeable allowance just to compensate for the possibility that something might one day happen. Aside from pure cash there are the usual sops to unions – paying union staff and encouraging membership at every opportunity.

But I want to end with something different: a shocking ideological decision. Clause 65 grants staff four weeks paid gender affirmation leave – four weeks – yet reproductive health and wellbeing leave available to women is just five days. The agreement contains 27 types of leave but can only find five days for women’s health problems – five days versus four weeks. There are five days per year for conditions associated with periods, or – not ‘and’ – five days for the menopause, which can cause complications which last years, yet four weeks every year for gender affirmation leave. Minister, the action I seek from you is an immediate intervention to address this deplorable mismatch, which is insulting to all Victorians and a stain on our state.