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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-06-03 Daily Xml
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JobKeeper Payment

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:53): I was relieved, like many Australians, I suppose, when the federal government finally caved in to the massive community pressure to establish the JobKeeper program to support the many working people in our communities whilst the economy and society are being ravaged by COVID-19. However, the begrudging nature of the federal government's implementation of the scheme was revealed in the significant design flaws in JobKeeper, which we only just latterly discovered were in fact not flaws as such but actually design implements of the scheme, put in place deliberately by the government.

Firstly, we saw millions of casual workers excluded from the scheme because they did not have a continuous period of service with one employer. Hospitality, retail and the arts industry workers, of course, are casually employed and those who have changed employers in the past 12 months suddenly found they were ineligible for JobKeeper and as such found themselves unemployed. They are the same people who usually do not have access to sick leave and other benefits.

I should not have to say to the federal government, in relation to the arts industry, that it is not an anomaly, it is actually a feature of the way that many artists work. They take short-term contracts for a period of weeks or months and then move on to another employer and may have as many as half a dozen or more employers in any particular year. The federal government should have known that, but these people will not get access to this program.

It was an avoidable catastrophe, I think, in terms of planning. We watched as it unfolded across several sectors of the economy, but we are now seeing it unfold across our university sector. Inexplicably, they, too, have been excluded from JobKeeper and offered no financial support, despite the key roles they play in underpinning our economies.

But for the University of South Australia, Flinders University and the University of Adelaide the pain will not end there. Apparently, they approached the state government in good faith, explaining their position and asking for some small slight relief from the state government in terms of a payroll tax waiver.

What was the response from the government and our Treasurer? Treasurer Rob Lucas shrugged it off, saying, 'Well, they're impacted, sure, but it's not like they're going to go broke and close down as a result of a lack of assistance from the South Australian government.' Treasurer Lucas, they may not close down, but the academics and the professional staff who have already lost their jobs are going through a world of pain and you have shown absolutely no sympathy for them and for the universities.

Where is the Premier in all this? His government will not support our institutions in their hour of need. He will not support the students studying for their futures, and he will not support the thousands of academic and professional staff who are set to lose their jobs. The Premier brags about his special relationship with the federal government. Well, Premier, pick up the phone to your colleagues in Canberra and demand that they support our South Australian universities. Do not just roll over like you and your government have done on the Murray-Darling river. How are we supposed to rebuild our economy, create the next generation of jobs and foster scientific endeavour in our universities if those institutions cannot afford to pay their staff or educate their students?

Job losses and insecure employment is not a new future of life for academics and professional staff at universities. Just last week, Elizabeth Farrelly wrote an opinion piece for Fairfax that was incredibly scathing of the university sector. She writes, 'Students have become customers. Teachers report widespread pressure to pass low-grade students but cannot speak of it, fearing reprisal.' I know that casualisation is a difficult area for university staff, so, too, is the downgrading of those institutions.

I know students who fear for the future of their degrees. I know academics who are not allowed to fail students, particularly overseas students, for fear of retribution through their own departments and agencies. The standards at our universities are dropping and this state government does absolutely nothing to support the people who work in those universities and those institutions and the students who wish to get a degree at those institutions to further their career prospects.

How on earth is someone expected to produce world-leading research, let alone take out a mortgage, pay the bills and live a life that most South Australians want to live, without job security? The average salary of vice-chancellors is now almost $1 million a year in this country. Compare that with overseas vice-chancellors at Oxford and Cambridge where it is more likely to be $600,000, or in Germany where it is more likely to be $250,000.

There has been significant pressure on these universities. This federal government and this state government in particular have abandoned those universities and those institutions in this state, and it is a shameful place for us to be.

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