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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-20 Daily Xml
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Telstra Job Losses

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:46): My question is to the Treasurer. What support will the government put in place for workers who will lose their employment following Telstra's announcement of job cuts? How many South Australian Telstra employees will be impacted?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:47): The Premier and the government obviously are disappointed to hear that, potentially, there may well be a number of South Australian workers impacted by the decision taken by Telstra, but that is obviously not a decision directly influenced by the government.

In relation to any role of the state government, we are pleased to hear that Telstra has announced that it has established a $50 million fund, part of which will be directed to retraining and assisting those workers who may well lose their entitlement—and that is an appropriate response. We are not talking about a company which is going out of business here which, in the recent past, we might well have been talking about.

Telstra is a business that has obviously made a business decision to downsize but to continue to operate. Appropriately, they have provided funding for retraining and trying to help workers find other jobs. As I understand it, part of that fund is to be used to continue to provide training and upskilling opportunities for existing staff as well. We will obviously look at what, if any, role the state government might take, but we operate from the mantra, firstly, that if there is an ongoing business that is making business-related decisions, shouldn't it be the responsibility of the business, in the first instance, to provide support and retraining rather than the taxpayers of South Australia to be the first port of call?

Again, we understand old-style Labor says that the state government has to hop in there and the taxpayers have to fund everything right from the word go, but we will look to see what, if any, role we might have to play, so we clearly wouldn't rule that out. However, in the first instance, we have a different view in relation to the responsibilities here and we are pleased to see that at least Telstra is announcing that they have a fund which is available.

I have also been advised—I don't have direct knowledge of this—that the Telstra enterprise agreement arrangements involve redundancy packages of up to 80 weeks for impacted workers. I think there would be many workers that I'm aware of, and that perhaps the honourable member might be aware of, who, in the event that they did lose their job, would be more pleased to see an 80-week payout rather than some of the payouts that they receive under their enterprise agreements.

The quick rush from honourable members opposite, that it's a state government's responsibility to do this and that, as I said, is an expected response from old-style Labor. As a new government, we will be prepared to do what we might need to do if there are gaps. We will have a look at that but, in the first instance, we see a responsibility for Telstra as a corporate citizen to manage the process as best as it can.

In relation to the last issue, we have asked the question and we are not aware of what the immediate impact is in South Australia. Telstra's statement is that it doesn't have a breakdown of the impacts in individual states and territories. So we are not in a position to provide any greater information to the public other than the information that we have been given, and that's exactly the nature of the information that we have been given.

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