ACTU Submission
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The ACTU submission points out that previous ACTU submission have already shown that:
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Privatisation doesn’t work. Privatisation advocates always argue that for-profit companies are simply better and don’t explain how or why. They conveniently ignore the actual experiences of sectors where privatisation has occurred.
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We’ve seen privatisation fail in the VET sector – where dodgy providers are everywhere, in childcare – where costs are sky-rocketing and places are impossible to find in cities and we’re actually seeing pushes in Victoria to take public transport back into public hands as ticket prices have soared and service satisfaction continues to be low.
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The Commission has utterly failed to show that it would be in there interests of workers, service users or the community to privatise any of the sectors they’ve selected for reform. Government has just told them to privatise something and they are trying to find an excuse.
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In this specific submission, we argue that:
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In social housing, the ACTU submission argues that the solutions advanced by the Commission of choice-based letting and using private properties for social housing would result in rent increases for social housing and in the private rental market, leaving those most needing assistance unable to access housing.
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For public hospitals, the ACTU submission attacks the Commission’s recommendations as attempts to undermine pay and conditions in the sector, identifies the inquiry as anti-worker and highlights that the Commission considers the possibility of their reforms leading to “Changing the employment arrangements for a hospital’s employees, or replacing them with a new workforce”[1], only advising against such a move on the basis it may be ‘disruptive’.
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Finally the ACTU submission criticises the structure of the inquiry thus far and the small number of specific recommendations for reform contained in the issues paper. The submission argues that by only detailing specific proposals in the last phase of the year-long inquiry, only months before the Commission reports to government, the Commission is attempting to limit meaningful stakeholder feedback on sweeping reforms to vital sectors.
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