CPSU Federal Office

Child Protection workers across the country have been trying to engage with their respective Departments about their workload for years.  Our message has been simple.  The system is stretched, workloads are unsustainable, we cannot provide adequate care to children in need, and we must adopt a national approach to staff shortages instead of stealing qualified practitioners from each other.

The Child Protection workforce is under immense stress and strain, with a severe shortfall in recruitment and an ongoing struggle to retain current practitioners.

16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence has begun. The Walk Against Family Violence took place last Friday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and it marks the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. The staggering list of women killed at the hands of ex/partners and family members is testament to the need for action on family violence. Family violence is a workplace issue.

The Federal Government has established a Service Delivery Advisory Group (GSDAG) to provide expert guidance, consultation, and recommendations on matters relating to the design and implementation of Government Services. Minister Bill Shorten has invited CPSU/SPSF Federal Secretary Karen Batt to join the independent body of expert specialists tasked with providing advice to the Minister for Government Services and Services Australia.

NSW Labor will reverse the privatisation of NSW jails, with Junee Correctional Centre returning to public ownership for the first time in 30 years followed by the notorious Parklea jail in western Sydney.  The NSW government has confirmed the contract with US multinational GEO Group for the southern NSW prison will not be renewed after 2025. The government estimates that it will cost the state $75 million a year to operate Junee at full capacity.  Junee prison is one of the largest in the state, housing more than 1000 inmates, including more than 480 maximum security prisoners.

Convention 151 which provides an international industrial framework for public sector workers’ to collectively bargain ensuring same industrial rights as private sector workers was the subject of a great discussion with officials from the ILO on Australia & Fiji government processes for moving ratification forward when we attended Global PSI meeting in Geneva earlier this month

Tax loopholes that benefit multinational companies in Australia are “stealing from the next generation”, prominent unions have warned.  The Community and Public Sector Union told a parliamentary inquiry into multinational tax avoidance that many companies advising governments on various policies had been exploiting loopholes.  The union’s joint national secretary Karen Batt said a dangerous cycle was playing out in government policy-making due to the current tax loopholes.

Australia’s now 122-year-old constitution still doesn’t recognise our first Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It’s time it did. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have asked that the form of recognition come through a Voice to Parliament, which will give advice on laws and policies that affect Indigenous people.

All over Australia there are people who write applications for public money, and they must be asking questions about a huge swindle that has been growing over the past two decades under our noses.

In one world, if successful, these grants are subject to staged payments dependent on evidence of progress.  When they end, final reports are required, showing how funds were acquitted, and demonstrating outcomes.

But there is another world: the alternative universe of big consultancies doing government work.

Our current laws have loopholes that have been used by big business to devise new ways to get out of paying proper wages and entitlements. It’s simple. People working alongside each other doing the same job, should get the same pay. For example, Qantas has flight attendant on the same plane, doing the same job but being paid less than their colleagues because Qantas has gamed the system. This is just not fair.

Unfair contracts/Employee and Employee like/Sham contracting.

The NSW Government is offering to lift public sector wages by 4.5% in the next financial year, to be delivered via a 4% pay rise and the 0.5% increase in superannuation under the SGL in July. NSW will also create an interest-based bargaining taskforce headed by former FWC deputy president Anna Booth and former State IRC president Roger Boland. 

The NSW Government says the taskforce is to conduct its work with a view to: