Wednesday, 30 October 2024

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:22): (1230) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Education, and the action that I seek is for the Labor government to hire school cleaners through the Department of Education and offer them secure, well-paid, ongoing positions. Their current practice of outsourcing cleaning services in our public schools is undervaluing the role of our cleaners within their school communities and is leading to job insecurity, inadequate pay and poor working conditions for school cleaners. These cleaners provide our schools with a vital service and a safe environment for students. They clean up after kids. That is no mean feat. We should be offering them secure jobs within the department with reasonable workloads in decent conditions. During the recent inquiry into the state education system in Victoria we heard about the shortcomings of outsourcing school-cleaning roles to private cleaning companies. The United Workers Union explained that:

Contract companies are run for profit, not for service. Cleaners are required to do more with less, and this places immense and unacceptable pressure on our cleaners and results in sub-quality services.

We heard from Julie Hooper, a school cleaner. She explained:

I am a cleaner. I have been a cleaner for over 20 years cleaning schools. I love cleaning schools, because you watch the kids grow up. It is at the stage where I am embarrassed to say I am a school cleaner because the standard has gone down that much. We are losing hours. In school holidays we are told we have to take holidays, with or without pay. If you have got no holiday pay, you are not going to get paid. Then we go back, and we have got a week to get the school back up to scratch. It is not happening.

Outsourcing is clearly failing our school communities. Cleaners are integral to the daily operations of our schools, and they deserve to be treated as valued members of the team. Direct employment would not only improve their working conditions but also enhance the quality and consistency of cleaning services provided. For example, in Queensland, Western Australia, the ACT and Tasmania school cleaners are directly employed by their state and territory governments. Anything less than bringing these essential workers into direct employment with the Department of Education would be a failure to address the issues at hand. Minister, the responsibility for this change lies with you. I urge you to take immediate action to end the outsourcing of school-cleaning services and to ensure that cleaners are provided with good, secure jobs through the department.