Productivity Commission Report is short-sighted – privatisation is not the answer

The CTU opposes recommendations made by in the Productivity Commission Report yesterday to privatise more social services under the guise of flexibility and innovation.

“The report does not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of publicly provided services, having a strong public sector workforce and the impact of how reducing funding in the public sector would affect existing social services. Public sector social service programmes and the value of the public sector workforce is not given a fair hearing in this Report,” said CTU President Helen Kelly.

“This report contends that competition will improve performance. But the experience of workers in already "competitively run" services such as aged and disability care services has been extremely negative with minimum wages and insecure work resulting in compromised care. This work is mainly done by women workers, and as our recent Equal Pay case has shown, they subsidise the services though pay rates which have become entrenched by gender discrimination,” Kelly said.

“We support social services that meet needs. The solution is more funding and better co-ordination of services rather than privatising services.”

“Government policy in the last five years has reduced service delivery, quality and flexibility with cuts to community services and public services, strict rules around work testing and a punitive social services model. Many of the Productivity Commission recommendations are simply a continuation of that agenda dressed up as something new. They represent a real threat to the foundation of decent social protection for all,” Kelly said.

ENDS

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