Teachers

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:39): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector on the topic of teachers' employment conditions.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: On Monday, the New South Wales government, rather than the Victorian government, reached an agreement with public school teachers to improve pay and conditions. The new deal involves a pay rise of 10 per cent over three years, with two extra pupil-free days per year. The teachers in New South Wales will receive cost-of-living bonuses and a right to disconnect after 3pm. It follows a pay increase last year to teachers in that state, which saw their salaries lift by between 8 to 12 per cent as part of the New South Wales Labor government's commitment to reinvest in the state's essential service workers.

In 2022, the University of South Australia released a report commissioned by the AEU's South Australian branch entitled 'Teachers at Breaking Point'. The report found that South Australian teachers work an average of over 50 hours per week, job satisfaction is as low as 52 per cent, and only 6.8 per cent of teachers feel that their views are valued by policymakers in South Australia. My questions to the Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, therefore, are:

1. Is the minister concerned that South Australian teachers will cross the border to New South Wales to get a better deal?

2. What is this government doing to improve teacher retention, particularly in the public school system?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:40): I thank the honourable member for his question. I look forward, when there is a public sector deal struck in any of the Eastern States, to getting a question very soon after from the honourable member. I think there was a question about nurses in Victoria, and today it's school teachers in New South Wales.

As I said in relation to his question before, I think there are many, many things that make us a destination that people want to live in and not leave. I think the days that you heard about people choosing to leave Adelaide and the jokes that you heard from other states are well and truly over. I think there are many, many reasons that people choose to come to and to stay in Adelaide.

In relation to teachers specifically, it was only in the last year (I think it was early this year) that we concluded negotiations for a new industrial agreement with teachers in South Australia that included as part of it—and I don't have the details in front of me—if I remember correctly, a right to disconnect, as the honourable member has pointed out, from the New South Wales agreement. Of course, those negotiations were not easy and they often aren't. The representatives of public sector workers, through their trade unions, negotiate fiercely for their workers' rights and conditions.

That EB was concluded. There are more EBs for public sector workers coming up over the next 18 months that we look forward to negotiating in good faith with public sector unions. It is something that is vastly different from the last government, who had things that they, in the government's view, wouldn't consider that manifested itself most profoundly in the negotiations between the former government and ambulance workers, who spent four years without getting a pay rise due to an EB, and the government took off the table any possibility of backpay.

I am very proud to be a part of a Labor government that, very early on in our term, concluded negotiations with the Ambulance Employees Association that included backpay for every year that the Marshall Lucas Liberal government didn't have that backpay.