Mrs SALLY QUINNELL (Camden) (17:23): The Minns Government was elected with a clear mandate to scrap the unfair wages cap and rebuild essential services in New South Wales. Up until 24 March this year, I was an essential worker.
Dr Hugh McDermott: You still are.
Mrs SALLY QUINNELL: I am still essential to the people of Camden. But I was a teacher. I was a frontline worker, and I was definitely at the coalface during COVID. We used to make a joke in the staffroom that being at the coalface meant that you were literally frozen. You were frozen in time when it came to wages, and you were frozen out of any negotiations. I discovered when we talked amongst ourselves that many of the teachers who worked with me were unable to live in the area in which they were teaching. In fact, when I was doorknocking during the campaign, I discovered that a large number of people who moved to Camden are teachers, firefighters, paramedics and nurses who all leave the suburb to go to the suburbs they need to work in because they cannot afford to buy there. That has a knock-on effect. It means that those integral members of the community cannot become parts of the areas in which they work. They are not able to volunteer on the weekends.
When I was doorknocking, firefighters from Narellan and Camden told me they were not able to get extra training because it would tip them over the wages cap and that was not able to happen. They were not able to get the training because it would have meant that they would be too qualified to run into a fire on our behalf. These are people who have chosen to serve the community on our behalf. None of them went into their jobs for the express purpose of getting a high wage. They went in to serve us, to serve our community. One of the jokes we often used to make in teaching is that the minute you said that your job was a vocation or you were serving the community it meant the former Government did not want to pay you. We would consistently say that if you wanted to be in the job when you were five years old, chances are you were not going to be able to afford a house when you were in the job as a 40-year-old. During COVID our paramedics and nurses undoubtedly carried the load for us. They were going in and doing jobs that we did not want to do. They were not in it for the money, but they were frozen out of being able to negotiate any future wage rise in any real way.
Under the former Government, real wages declined by 8.7 per cent since June 2020. That compares with a decline of 6.8 per cent for private sector workers over the same period. Let me reiterate that. Under the former Liberal-Nationals Government, New South Wales essential workers were left with lower wages than before it came into office. I think we can all agree that prices went up, but wages did not. That left New South Wales as the only State with a wages cap in place. The effect of frozen wages means that many of our essential workers have moved interstate. In fact, a candidate in a borderline electorate whom I spoke to during the campaign said they were better off working interstate. It was much better for them to do their job interstate but then fight for the real ideas of New South Wales.
A lot of the people I spoke to, particularly firefighters and paramedics, needed to get second or third jobs to afford their mortgage. Without fail, they are leaving their industry. People told me before the election it was not 60 per cent of teachers who were thinking about leaving teaching; it was 100 per cent. I know of six resignations sitting on a principal's desk that had written on a Post-it note on them "In case of a Liberal Party win". This is the situation that we have come into. It is important that we give the message to essential workers that we support them and respect what they do. We need to bring frontline workers back to New South Wales and into the communities where they work so that they can be active and effective members of our community. We can do that through removing the wages cap.
