Mrs SALLY QUINNELL (Camden) (17:06): I move:

That this House:

Supports the New South Wales Government's decision to remove the wages cap that has allowed New South Wales to retain experienced public sector workers and recruit new police officers, nurses, paramedics, hospital staff, teachers, firefighters, child protection workers and other vital professions.

In moving the motion, I point out a very long list of workers were affected by the wages cap that was put on by the previous Coalition Government. In fact, one thing I found interesting upon being elected to this place is that it seems that the biggest deficit in New South Wales history was passed to the Minns Labor Government, and it was paid for by our public sector workers. Putting a cap on their wages did nothing but decimate our education and health systems. There were 1,112 nurses whose roles were unfunded; they would have lost their jobs in 12 days. There were 286 firefighters whose roles were left unfunded by the former Government, including the entire force at Oran Park Fire Station, which is a very important fire station to my local community.

Mr David Mehan: Why do they hate Oran Park?

Mrs SALLY QUINNELL: Indeed. We could go into that ad nauseam. In 2022 conditions for teachers were so poor that, for the first time in history, resignations outstripped retirement. People were walking away from teaching due to the conditions and pay under the frozen wages that they were offered. In the Coalition Government's final year in office, the number of senior executives increased by 9.4 per cent—more than double the 4 per cent growth rate of the overall public sector workforce. That followed an increase of 379 senior executives in 2022 and 347 in 2021. The Coalition Government promised to cut consultant expenses by 20 per cent each year from 2019-20. Instead, it hired one new consultant every hour—10,000 times—and spent over $1 billion in five years. That led to a complete breakdown of our education and health systems.

We had buildings being built and no‑one to staff them. We had nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers leaving the industry in record numbers—not just unusual numbers, not just slightly higher than we would like numbers, record numbers. What is very interesting about that is, after we had COVID there was a need for people to get more regular work, yet people were leaving those sectors to go somewhere else. That "somewhere else" often involved moving interstate and overseas. What it involved was somewhere other than New South Wales. We were bleeding these workers out of our areas at record rates. One of the first things we did when elected as a government was abolish the wages cap. I think it is very important to focus on the word "cap".

Basically, a wages cap means that a person's wage cannot go any higher than a certain point because it has a top point. What we changed was that we said, "We're going to negotiate with you"—something that I think is a dirty word to the Opposition—"and discuss with you what are some of the pays and conditions we can talk about." In that talking, we have managed to deliver some pay rises. Last year we delivered the largest wage increase in over a decade: 4.5 per cent in 2023-24. That is a real pay rise, above forecasted inflation, for essential workers every year of the pay offer. We introduced a new mutual gain bargaining framework to link better pay and conditions for essential workers to the delivery of high-quality essential workers.

Something that I was very proud to stand up and shout from the rooftops about is that we have given teachers their largest pay rise in a generation—taking them from among the worst paid to the best paid in the country. As someone who came into teaching right at the end of the 1990s, I can say that when I started teaching, teachers could quite comfortably get themselves a little home, a little starter house, but what happened over the 12 years those opposite were in office is not only that teaching positions were not permanent positions, which this Government has also changed, but also that teachers could not afford to live in New South Wales.

Ms Liesl Tesch: Not on a teacher's wage.

Mrs SALLY QUINNELL: Yes, not on a teacher's wage. This Government has delivered a boost to take‑home pay for more than 50,000 healthcare workers through increased salary packaging benefits. We have funded safe staffing in our hospitals by permanently funding 1,112 nurses that the former Government would have sacked and by recruiting an additional 1,200 nurses on top of that. What this Government has done is made sure that in this State the people we called on, those who became the frontline people during COVID, those we needed the most to keep our State going, those who went out every day to work—like me; I still went to work every day and I taught the children of those workers every day during COVID—very quickly are thanked. Now we are saying to them, "You are worth more money. You are worth a bigger rate of pay, and you are worth coming to the table, having a conversation and negotiating about your own pay, with respect and with dignity." That is why I am very pleased to support demolition of the wages cap by this Government.