Ms BURNET (Clark) – Deputy Speaker, I thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this important issue to the House. The member has been talking about frontline workers. As a former health worker, I know what vacancy control does and how it ruins what services are available. With these vacancy controls, health frontline workers are not meeting the demands of the community, and it is vulnerable Tasmanians who are suffering. It is cuts to allied health professional jobs, doctors, nurses and all people working in the health system, just as an example. It is undermining those safe, secure jobs that Tasmanians rely upon.
We are talking about safe, secure jobs. In another context, over the last 10 years, which is how long the Liberals have been in power, there have been 85 deaths at work. That is an unfortunate number. It means that people are not safe in their workplace. We need to make sure that there are improvements.
Mr Abetz commented about the jobs profile and how creating so many more jobs is a good thing. No doubt, but unfortunately, if we look at those jobs, there are more part-time jobs for Tasmanians. Tasmanians are paid less than the average across Australia, so the value of those jobs is actually decreasing. The Tasmanian workforce is getting older, there are more part-time workers than the national average, and we are being paid less than the national average. That is not safe, secure jobs for Tasmanians.
Tasmanians rely on other services to get to work, or to work. There are transport services. It is a pity that the Transport minister is not here, but we need flexible, predictable, regular and reliable public transport services. This is not occurring. We are seeing this less and less.
The digital connectivity that everybody in Tasmania relies upon is not there either. This is increasing disadvantage, particularly in rural and remote areas.
Economist Saul Eslake says 59 per cent of Tasmanians are in the two most disadvantaged socio‑economic status quintiles, and only 20 per cent are in the two most advantaged quintiles. We do not want this gap between the haves and have-nots to be increasing. We need safe, secure jobs for everybody, and we need to reduce these gaps in order to lift Tasmania out of this trend. We do not want to see it making more vulnerable Tasmanians even more vulnerable.
We need security for our future in mitigation and adaptation for communities to be ready for the climate catastrophes we are seeing more and more frequently. We need resilience in communities, and local governments have a pivotal role in ensuring that resilience. We have disasters occurring. I think of how Hobart was affected by the May 2018 floods. In January 2019, we had the devastating bushfires in the Huon Valley, in that very dry area which was vulnerable to lightning strikes. It does not create job security when we have climate catastrophes. We need to ensure that we act for resilient communities and act to mitigate and adapt to climate change so that we have job security into the future.
