please cut text APRIL- JUNE 2021 LEARNING OR INVISIBLE WOUNDS EARNING? Post Traumatic Universities after Stress Disorder in COVID-19 the workplace PUBLIC SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF NSW/CPSU NSW POST OFFICE APPROVED PP 255003/01563 ISSNPOST 1030-0740 OFFICE APPROVED PUBLIC SERVICE ASSOCIATION OF NSW/CPSU NSW PP 255003/01563 ISSN 1030-0740 FSS0124_Press FP_Brand_Red Tape Public Serivce_210x275mm+3_v03_Turbine.indd 1 11/3/21 2:18 pm please cut text YOUR UNION APRIL- JUNE 2021 CONTENTS From the General Secretary 04 The social cost of education cuts News 05 The scandal of Scone TAFE From the President 06 Universities and the regions PSA HEAD OFFICE From the Assistant 160 Clarence Street, 08 General Secretary Sydney NSW GPO Box 3365, Has higher learning lost its way? Sydney NSW 2001 09 T 1300 772 679 Where to now? F (02) 9262 1623 18 The post-COVID world of universities W www.psa.asn.au www.cpsunsw.org.au Work Health and Safety E [email protected] [email protected] 24 Not all wounds bleed First Nations 27 Our union’s Aboriginal Council MANAGING EDITOR Stewart Little, Women at Work General Secretary 28 International Women’s Day 2021 ISSUE EDITOR Jason Mountney Tea Break ISSUE EDITOR 33 News and reviews Marianne Ledic ART DIRECTION 18 Mine Konakci Training ENQUIRIES 34 Brush up your skills PSA Communications Unit 1300 772 679 MEMBERSHIP T 1300 772 679 E [email protected] PRINTER Spotpress Pty Ltd 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place Marrickville NSW 2204 [email protected] 27 All members of CPSU NSW are also members of the Public Service Association. The PSA is the associated body that manages and resources CPSU NSW. April-June 2021 RED TAPE 3 OPINION From the General Secretary Stewart Little ATTACKS ON EDUCATION HURT US ALL The post-COVID world needs a All these challenges can be faced with a commercial providers. Would you entrust better education system, not brighter, better-educated society – one that your house to a tradesperson who trained values the people involved in learning at in a course designed to run as fast as more outsourcing and budget all stages, from a support person helping possible for the biggest profit, or one who cuts. someone with a learning disorder keep went through the tried-and-tested TAFE up with their peers, through to TAFE and system? F ALL the cuts to university staff enabling students to learn Universities face possibly the biggest public services the in a well-supported, properly maintained challenge of all. COVID-19 and Canberra’s people of our state environment. acrimonious spat with Beijing has endure, pulling money changed their business model for years to and jobs out of come. The export dollars from overseas education is possibly students may never return to the heady the most callous. LIKE OUR SCHOOLS AND days of recent years. Instead, these places Long seen as an investment in a better can be taken by local students if the Osociety, education has been transformed TAFE COLLEGES, THE commitment and the funding are there. into yet another business by a government UNIVERSITY SYSTEM WAS Governments, both state and federal, that knows the cost of everything and the simply have to look at investing more value of nothing. DESIGNED FOR EDUCATION, money in higher education. Rebuilding The recent moves to sell the Scone NOT AS A SOURCE OF an economy devastated by a pandemic TAFE campus (see story right) shows the will be hard enough. Rebuilding it in a Government sees the campus as a real EXPORT REVENUE sustainable, low-carbon manner will be estate opportunity rather than a place even tougher. But with a well-funded that has launched countless careers in a Our schools staff have a much-deserved university system open to a larger rewarding, well-paid industry. pay rise, now they need permanent number of Australian school graduates, The debacle in universities has proven positions and a safer place to work. anything is possible. the folly of turning halls of learning into CPSU NSW members in TAFE need As with our schools and TAFE colleges, an export market akin to the trade in coal protection from job cuts and campus the university system was designed for or iron ore. closures. NSW has long boasted it has education, not as a source of export Even in our schools it was only the the world’s best vocational training revenue. It may have taken a global initiative of the PSA that meant support system, yet nearly every decision from pandemic for our ruling class to wake up and administrative staff were able to earn Macquarie Street seems to favour cut-price to that. a wage commensurate with the vital role they play in an inclusive education system. This is about more than just our members; it is about society in general. A better-educated society is one with fewer convicted felons in prisons and fewer people shut out of the job market. It is one that cherishes ideas rather than just business outcomes. It is one that sits at the top of good tables and at the bottom of bad ones. Australia’s comparatively strong position in the wake of COVID-19 should not lull us into a false sense of security. We face huge challenges rebuilding an economy devastated by the disease and the resulting shutdowns. China’s position at the centre of our export markets is in peril and Australia is at risk of becoming a global climate pariah as other countries show a firmer commitment to reducing carbon emissions. 4 RED TAPE April-June 2021 please cut text TAFE CPSU NSW SLAMS SCONE TAFE SELL-OFF Students can’t learn equestrian skills on a computer. HE ADVERTISEMENT from the real estate spruiker says it all: “An excellent opportunity exists to acquire a 17.9-hectare site in the Horse Capital of Australia, Scone.” You couldn’t ask for a better Tlocation. The property is lush, bucolic, surrounded by rural estates and equine establishments, opposite Scone Airport and adjacent to the Hunter Valley Equine Research Centre. The current owners have spent millions improving the property, including expansive stables, an animal enclosure, hay shed and an arena. There is even a tenant willing to pay $50,000 a year in rent! So what’s the catch? Look past the cheesy real estate copy and you will see the sale is part of a grubby plan to gut and privatise NSW’s great vocational education system. The ad is for the sale of Scone’s state- of-the-art TAFE campus for less than the Government paid for it. TAFE will lease the property for up to two years before a new private owner takes over. Stewart Little, State Branch Secretary of the CPSU NSW, condemned the decision and the impact it will have on the job prospects of local residents. Mr Little dismissed the idea the CLC stud farms and a world-class thoroughbred “The NSW Government should be could replace the quality of education offered breeding and racing industry. investing in the Scone TAFE and the at the Scone campus. “The CLC is designed The sale comes despite a 2016 promise amazing rural and equine courses it to teach skills like real estate services and by the Upper Hunter MP Michael offers, not selling the campus to a private barista coffee preparation,” he said. “It can’t Johnsen that the Scone TAFE campus operator,” he said. “This sale is a massive provide the practical experience in horse would not close. Mr Johnsen now publicly blow to the people of Scone and the breeding and animal handling needed to supports the sale and endorses a private Upper Hunter as they desperately try to prepare students for jobs in the multi-billion- operator taking over the site once TAFE recover from an economic downturn.” dollar equine industry. Watching a video has been displaced. The advert reveals the sale is caused of a horse is no replacement for hands-on “I have no objection to this and I by the 2019 opening of a digital-style experience with a live animal. strongly believe the facility should remain education facility, known as a Connected “Youth unemployment in the Upper as a local educational place for equine and Learning Centre (CLC). The CLC is Hunter is nearly 18 per cent, so selling off agricultural courses, delivered by a registered housed in a small building in Scone’s this TAFE campus is only going to make training organisation,” said Mr Johnsen on a main street and offers mainly online the situation worse.” statement published on his website. courses with limited access to face-to-face The equine-focused TAFE is a key The TAFE system has been battered teaching. There are currently 14 CLCs reason why Scone is known as the “Horse by NSW Government cuts with 6000 operating in NSW and the Government Capital of Australia”. TAFE graduates teachers and support staff sacked since has provided no guarantees other TAFEs support the largest equine veterinary the Coalition won office in 2011, with the won’t be closed now the CLCs are practice in the southern hemisphere, an public system forced to compete against operational. Equine Research Centre, more than 70 cut-price private operators. April-June 2021 RED TAPE 5 OPINION From the President Kylie McKelvie WHAT PUBLIC SERVICES MEAN TO OUR STATE Public service jobs are not only earners and their immediate families who Public services will help the state important to our members, but suffer. recover, COVID-19 and its resulting havoc The people of NSW, regardless of where have hit NSW hard.