Before the election Chris Minns promised that public sector wage increases would be 100% funded through productivity savings and wouldn’t cost the Budget a cent.
Instead, today’s pay increase for paramedics will cost the taxpayer $500 million over four years. This is yet another broken promise.
We don’t think anyone could reasonably begrudge a pay increase for paramedics, and we acknowledge and applaud the hard work and dedication of NSW paramedics.
However, the Minns Government should not be robbing our health system to pay the paramedics. By their own admission, this deal will see further cuts in the Health portfolio. This includes what the Government coyly calls “savings associated with recruitment challenges”; that’s code for leaving frontline vacancies (including nurses) unfilled.
Before today the Government had already cut Health spending this year by 4% in real terms, including ripping $150 million out of palliative care.
Chris Minns must immediately detail these latest cuts and guarantee no reductions in budgeted frontline services.
Chris Minns should have had this dispute resolved months ago. Instead he almost allowed our state’s Triple Zero system to collapse.
The people of NSW shouldn’t have to suffer cuts to health services in order to pay for the Government’s union deals.
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