Teachers Dispute

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Education, Training and Skills. Can the minister assure the house there will be no further disruption to school during term 4 due to industrial action?

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:54): Thank you, member for Morialta. I am very happy to provide an update to this house about the events of last week around the enterprise bargaining negotiations that have been ongoing now.

As members of this place would no doubt be aware, there was a second day of industrial action last week, which does cause disruption to school communities and families as well who, in many cases if their school is one of the schools that was closed instead of being open or open with a modified program, are needing to find alternative childcare arrangements. I know that is hard for many South Australian families and it is not lost upon us.

The department did the best it could last week. In fact, the week before, on the Friday as I understand it, given that there was the spectre of strike action as threatened by the union, we sent out comms packs to schools to say that if the strike does go ahead—which in the end it did—here are the comms packs that you need to communicate with parents in a timely fashion. So we gave them as much time as possible to make alternative arrangements for the strike date.

Where are we at in terms of the offers that have been made by the government? Well, since the log of claims, the official document setting forth what the union wanted from the government as part of this enterprise bargaining agreement was given to the government on, I think, about 21 July.

Three offers have been made by the government. The first was around about $1.2 billion, and I understand a record for any offer made as part of an enterprise bargaining agreement here in South Australia. Offer No. 2 went up again and surpassed offer No. 1, and then the most recent offer, No. 3, again surpassed offer No. 2.

We have moved our position on salaries on each occasion. We had 3 per cent and then we added $1,500 payments at the request of the union. They were removed for offer three. The union was very clear with the Premier and me that they wanted a higher salary increase in the first year, particularly around cost of living, and of course to make sure that that was factored into future increases as well. We did that.

The union was very clear though that, as part of their claim for this enterprise bargaining negotiation, the priorities were twofold. The priorities were salary and the priorities were workload, and we are now agreed on the one hour of extra non-instructional time to be rolled out across the South Australian public system here in South Australia.

What we are not agreed on is how long it will take us to do that. Of course, as people in here have no doubt realised, the only way to provide our teaching staff in the public system with an extra hour of NIT—or non-instructional time—without actually reducing the quantum of education that young people in the public system receive is by backfilling that teacher with another teacher to make sure that there is someone standing in front of that class while the other teacher has their additional hour of NIT.

That comes with a hefty price tag. I think that under our proposal, by the time it would be fully ramped up with all schools it would be about $70 million or more per year, but it also comes with a very hefty ask in terms of workforce—more than 500 new teachers.

Of course, part of the basis of the union's claim this time around is a teacher-shortage crisis, and we are 60 short here in South Australia—nothing like the numbers in Victoria of around 2,500 and New South Wales more, but of course it does speak to the difficulty that we would have in rolling out NIT further.

The government continually is willing to stay at the table and do everything we can to answer your question, member for Morialta, to avoid any disruption, but I won't have any suggestion from any quarters that we haven't done everything in our power to come to a final agreement, and we will continue to do that.