Legislative Council: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Contents

Enterprise Bargaining

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:11): My question is to the Treasurer.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Is the Treasurer able to update the chamber on any recent developments with respect to enterprise bargaining with the public sector?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:11): I am very pleased to be able to indicate that the government has been able to successfully resolve a number of enterprise agreements with smaller but nevertheless very important sections of the public sector. The government has settled two particular deals in relation to hardworking staff of the Adelaide Festival Centre. We have settled an agreement with 220 cleaners, gardeners, carpenters, painters, plumbers and duty operators for a 1.2 per cent wage increase from the end of last year and a further 1.5 per cent increase later this year.

Another 95 hardworking professional administrative employees—such as accountants, IT, marketing and communications staff—at the Adelaide Festival Centre also voted overwhelmingly to support a 1.2 per cent pay increase from late last year and a 1.5 per cent increase from later this year. In addition to that approximately 100 (I think) staff in HomeStart have just settled a three-year agreement of 1.5 per cent increases from this year, next year and 2023, with some offsetting arrangements that I will not go into in terms of detail.

The government continues to sit down cooperatively with those union leaders who are prepared to sit down cooperatively with the government and work through sensible salary increases. Those have all been in or around 1.2 per cent and 1.5 per cent salary increases over either two or three-year periods.

I congratulate the hardworking people in the industrial relations section of the Treasury department and thank them for their work. I also thank those union leaders and members who ultimately overwhelmingly voted for what are sensible salary increases in and of the order of 1.2 to 1.5 per cent as we seek to emerge from the global pandemic.