Dear Member,

Today’s Mercury includes an open letter from Liberal leader Will Hodgman to all Government Employees. The letter is designed to assure Public Sector workers that the Liberals would ‘not reduce the size of the State public service, with the exception of cutting the number of Senior Executive Service employees by 50.’ We all welcome this commitment, apart from the loss of further SES jobs. The letter goes on to say ‘Other than these specific differences, our Public Sector employment policy is identical to the Government’s.’

I wrote to the State’s political parties asking them to guarantee future public services by endorsing the policy our Members had developed. The Liberals indicated they were still developing a formal public sector policy and gave no specific commitments. By contrast Labor provided a detailed response that included a number of commitments and the Greens gave it ‘in-principle’ support. Now the Liberals say their policy is ‘identical to the Government’s.’

Can we assume from this that the Liberals are now committed to no forced redundancies, to retaining permanent employment as the principal form of employment, to retaining a State Industrial Relations system that covers all Public Sector workers and to returning dividends from the improving budget to maintain services because these are Labor’s stated policy?

Members made it clear they didn’t want the Public Sector to be a political football and that’s why they developed a detailed policy. It’s in the best interest of all Tasmanians that our three parties fully endorse this policy. Labor needs to go further as they haven’t yet endorsed the whole policy, the Liberals need to provide a detailed response and we must clarify what the Greens mean by ‘in-principle’ support.

We welcome the commitment on jobs but encourage the Liberals to tell us exactly how a Hodgman Government would manage the Public Sector.

To read the responses submitted by the Liberals, Labor and the Greens and to keep up with changes in the campaign go to www.abettertasmania.com or join our Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=339735025284

www.cpsu.com.au
Tom Lynch General Secretary Community & Public Sector Union