New Revenue Measures Necessary For State's Future

The Union for West Australian public servants has slammed the overnight decision by the Legislative Council to disallow the gold royalty increase.

CPSU/CSA Branch Secretary, Toni Walkington said “Last night, members of the Legislative Council made a decision to axe $332M from the State Budget. If they think that this funding can be replaced by finding savings from the public sector, they are wrong, they can’t, there is simply nothing left to give.

During the last State Budget alone, West Australians working in the public sector accounted for more than half of the budget repair measures.

“People working in public services do their jobs because they want to deliver valued services to West Australians, accumulated and ongoing waves of job cuts make this impossible.

“Two weeks ago we heard significant numbers of staff were being cut in education, last week the Police Commissioner said that staff assisting police would be cut and sworn officers would have to do the work of those staff. These cuts do not make sense.

Last week over 1,000 West Australians, within 48 hours, signed an online CPSU/CSA petition calling on the Legislative Council to pass the royalty increase.

“West Australians want the Government to be able to address the economic situation it finds itself in but they can’t do that if non-government members in the Legislative Council will not support revenue measures.

“New revenue measures are a necessary part of a sustainable budget repair. Public sector staff are doing more and more with less and less and it's time for other parts of our economy to do their bit to contribute to repairing the state economy."