Shouts from the desert

In an effort to paint Labor as irresponsible economic managers, the Federal Government has commissioned a report that claims the State governments have blown the "windfall" from the GST by overpaying public servants, with the majority of the increase having gone into "education, health and policing." To put it another way, the Liberals want the States to cut the pay of teachers, nurses and police.

In the case of teachers and nurses at least this completely ignores economic realities. The States are having a hard time keeping both teachers and nurses in the system. These critical roles are becoming much harder to fill with existing staff leaving for other industries. A good number of them are becoming lawyers, and when I started my law degree I was startled to find that teachers and nurses easily topped the list of current occupations in the graduate law class. Most of those completed their law degrees full time or even at a faster rate than full time while working at the same time. This is a phenomenal work load &emdash; these people are obviously not lazy, in fact they are the very people we should be trying to retain in the system. Yet they were focusing their energy on switching to a new career as fast as humanly possible.

When the Federal Government calls for lower salaries for teachers and nurses they are seeking to reduce incentives to professions which are already losing many of the best and brightest. Rising salaries are a reflection of this economic reality, and if the State governments were to cut those salaries the quality of health and education services would drop dramatically.