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Katie Woolf spoke with Australian Education Union NT Branch President Jarvis Ryan · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: And well.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Joining us on the line right now is Jarvis Ryan,
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: the Northern Territory Education Union head.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Good morning to you, Jervis, good to be with you, Katie.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Now Jarvis, firstly, can I just ask we just catching
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: up with Kay Densley from the CPSU about the public
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: service wage freeze. What is the situation for the education
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Union members. Do they agree to this wage freeze or
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: are they against it?
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: Oh? Very much against, Katie. And we have members in
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: school support roles under that same general agreement, the General
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: public Sector Agreement, and they've overwhelmingly rejected the offer and
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: we've communicated that to the Commissioner. We will be joining
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: the other unions with the rally outside of Parliament next
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Tuesday to make that message very well known. With the teachers.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: We're still in negotiations at this stage. Our agreement expires
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: next month, but we will expect a similar response that
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: the thousand dollars which is not in dexter salary over
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: four years, it's just not going to cut it, particularly
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: when you look at Victoria's offering sign on bonuses of
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: up to fifty thousand dollars for teachers as a national
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: teacher shortage. The problems only going to get worse, and
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: the anti government has to wake up to the reality
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: of that if you don't pay competitive salaries, you will
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: not recruit people to the territory, let alone keep them here.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And is that the concern Jarvis?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Like when we talk about education staff and those support
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: staff and teachers as well, if those wages are frozen,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: do you think that we're actually going to lose experienced teachers?
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean I talk with people if people may
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: not be aware of just how difficult it is right
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: now to fill particularly specialist positions. So we're talking about counselors,
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: people have skills around working with students with special needs,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: people in senior leadership positions. We're talking about really specialized
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: areas that there's a lot of positions, particularly in the
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: heart of the staff regions like Alice Springs and the Barkley.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: We're having trouble right now. I've had Principles openly talk
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: about what they call a staffing shortage or a staffing crisis.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: And you know what that means is people who might
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: want to take long service leave and things like that,
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: those requests are not all that readily granted because of
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: the difficulty of backfilling teachers who go and leave and
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: things like that. So we've sort of been warning about
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: this for several years. The government here, I think, has
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: taken a lazy approach of employing very large numbers of
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: people on contracts and a very disposable sort of turnover
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: mindset of recruitment and retention. And we're going to begin
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: to see the fruits of it. That's all before we
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: factor in before you wage free, so no people call
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: us up and so what's on the cards in terms
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: of pay for you. This might be a teacher from
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Queenslands and we come over here and I tell them, well,
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: nothing until twenty twenty five based on the wages offering,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Thanks very much, and hang up the phone. So they'll
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: look around elsewhere.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what we don't want to be.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: You know, we don't want to be losing people, but
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: we also want to make sure that the territory is
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: an attractive place for people to move to. And another
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: topic that you and I spoke about just a week
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: or so ago was about teachers being a little bit
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: concerned about the plan when it comes to COVID over
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the Christmas period, now, Jarvis, we had a bit of
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: a chat with the Chief mister Michael Gunny yesterday about
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: those vaccination rates and exactly what he is going to
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: change when we reach the eighty percent vaccination rate. If
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: you miss that interview, take a listen to what he
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: had to say.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: Now, the only jurisdictions that have gone to this lockout
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: phase to borrow that phrase, Victoria and arguably need to
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: have Wales. They're doing it not to get to COVID zero.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: They're doing it to manage the growth of coronavirus. Want
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: to be clear here, a lockout might be a scenario
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: where we have community transmission non territory and we can't
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: get it back to zero. That's why a lockdown probably
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: remains the best most effective method.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So what exactly is going to change here?
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Well, territory is head of the nation, so we unlike
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: the rest of the country, we have no restrictions here.
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  Speaker 2: But so what's like once we get to eighty percent
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  Speaker 2: vaccination rate? What exactly is going to change? Is it
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: just going to be that you can maybe quarantine from home?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, how much is that going to cost?
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  Speaker 2: I know that you have said that it is something
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: that even if you're quarantining from home territory. It's going
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: to have to pay that bill themselves.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: Mate, I said, we may charge them for the compliance checks.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: So obviously you can't charge them we're staying at their
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: own house, but obviously it cost money. Or do you
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  Speaker 4: compliance in and around someone's staying at their own home
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: for quarantine, We may charge that. That's not decision that
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  Speaker 4: we've made. So obviously we're working that through so Jarvis.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not sure whether that actually provides our
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: education staff, our teachers, the certainty that all of us
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: were hoping for. But by the sounds of it, not
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: a great deal is going to change once we reach
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: eighty percent, aside from being able to quarantine at home,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: but at what cost we're on.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Shure, Yeah, and I just know I summon up as follows.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: I did listen to the interview. So what he's saying
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: is lockdowns will still take place. They'll take place more
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: or less on as low as a single case. Remote
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: communities with low vaccination rates may still be locked down
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: in buy security bubbles. And as you say, the only
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: change is that maybe people could quarantine at home. But
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: to me, this is almost no different to where we
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: were in sort of March April May last year. As
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: you recall, people could quarantine at home. So what I
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: don't get is why the risk profile doesn't change. So
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Singapore is at eighty percent vaccination. If you look at
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: their numbers they're tracking it, I think it's about five
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: hundred cases a day. Deaths are close to zero, hospitalizations
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: are very very low. So I just think that the
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Chief ministers saying we have no restrictions here, it's not true.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: We are still operating on a premise of completely keeping
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: COVID out of the Northern territory. But what that means
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: is you can't go to places like Victoria and New
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  Speaker 3: South Wales. You can't plan a holiday for somewhere like
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Queensland without running the risk of being locked out. And yeah,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I'm someone now who is vaccinated and would like to
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: be able to travel. I have family into states. Many
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: people do. But more or less we're being told that
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: despite all of that, despite the vaccination rates going up,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: there's basically no change. It's how long is it supposed
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: to go on for? I think that's the question we
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: need to be asking, because there's nothing on the table,
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: there's no plan, there's nothing in writing it's just down
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: the track. We may tell you about some changes, but
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: it's to me that's lazy and it's poor. And when
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: you look at what's happening and the rest of the world,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: where people can travel freely between countries, they've got their
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: schools are going, places like Denmark have got no restrictions
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: in place. I mean, how long do we want to
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: live as the hermit Kingdom?
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got to tell you, I was quite surprised
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: when it's said that yesterday.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: It's sort of the first that.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I had heard that, you know, not a great deal
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: else is going to change. And I know that for
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of Territorians listening, and as you and I
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: have spoken about before, particularly, you know, for teachers who
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: maybe come from another state and wondering whether they're going
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: to come back after that Christmas break, it doesn't provide
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a huge amount of clarity or a huge amount of
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: certainty for those people.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: No, And I think there's a number of problems there.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: One of them which we're all painfully aware of, is
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  Speaker 3: we have a very huge ticking time bomb, which is
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: our remote communities. And on the one hand, he's saying that, yes,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: we need to increase vaccination rates in those communities and
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: everyone would agree. But then he's also saying that if
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: we don't get to those numbers we want to, will
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: still lock down those communities and things like that. So
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: there's no real I don't think unless you actually tell
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: people at a certain point we're going to have to
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: start removing restrictions. There's very little incentive for people to
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: take up the viral take up the vaccine. And one
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  Speaker 3: of the concerns I have based on what I've found
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: from reaching out to remote communities, particularly in Central Australia,
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  Speaker 3: the vaccines are freely available there. It's not a case
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: of lack of supply. It is clinics have the vaccine
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: and people are actively refusing to get it. They're believing
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: misinformation about things. You know that there's a threat from
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: the vaccine, and from what I understand that there's very
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: little attempts to overcome those that hesitancy. They're not doing
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: community meetings, they're not communicating in local languages, they're not
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: they don't have a strategy in place to actually break
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: through some of those concerns. And I think we're going
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: to get to a situation scene where we're going to
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: have probably very high levels of vaccination in places like
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: ol Springs and Dalen, maybe very low levels of vaccination
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: in communities, will be having to keep the territory border
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: is effectively closed because of that, because of that disjuncture,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: and that that's going to become I think a real
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: point of contention across across the Northern Territory.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you, and you know, I think
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that some serious work needs to happen to ensure that
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: that isn't the case. At Javi Shrin. It is always
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: good to catch up with you. I really appreciate your
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: time this morning.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Thanks very much, Katie, thank you.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: That is Javis Shrian there the North from the Northern
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Territory Education Union