TEACHERS —
RECRUITMENT
753. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Premier:
I refer to our question asked in
this place yesterday, articles in The West Australian today and the
train wreck interview from the Minister for Education and Training on 6PR this
morning announcing that part of WA's strategy is to recruit teachers
from New South Wales.
(1) Is the
Premier aware that New South Wales has launched an aggressive $125 million
recruitment strategy to find close to 4 000 teachers to fulfil its own
shortage?
(2) How many
teachers will the government need to recruit to ensure there is a teacher in
front of every class in 2022?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
(1)–(2) I do not accept any of the preamble by this MP. I advise
him once again not to read out what is put in front of him by the staff
in the Leader of the Opposition's office.
The truth of the matter is that we
are determined to get the teaching and education workforce vaccinated. It needs
to get vaccinated. We need to do that in order to protect a critical industry,
which is education, in this state and also
make sure that parents, families and children are kept as safe as possible in
our schools. That is why we are doing it. Overwhelmingly, we have had
the support of the teaching workforce, and the education workforce more
broadly.
I was at a meeting the other day with
a senior union leader from the education workforce, and she was supportive of our vaccination program. If teachers
and other education staff are vaccinated, obviously they will all be at
work next year and have a job available to them. That is what everyone needs to
understand. As I said, overwhelmingly, the
education workforce understands that. Our advice, by surveys of the workforce,
is that there is overwhelming support for
vaccination. The vast majority of teachers and education assistants have now
been fully vaccinated and the remaining, who have had one vaccination, are
obviously heading in the direction of another vaccination.
Point of Order
Mr P.J.
RUNDLE: Madam Speaker, the question was about teacher recruitment,
not about vaccination. I refer to section 78 of the standing orders—relevance.
Several members interjected.
The SPEAKER: Can we have some quiet please. Firstly, there is
not an obligation to name the section of the standing orders. The member
is actually out of order. Secondly, I do not believe you have a point of order.
You may not be wanting to draw that connection, but the Premier is choosing to
do that as part of his answer.
Questions without Notice Resumed
Mr M. McGOWAN: There is
obviously a connection because the question asked yesterday referred to it—that
some education staff may not get vaccinated. The expectation is that 98.6 per
cent are either fully vaccinated or expect to be vaccinated by the time the
mandate to work in education kicks in at the start of the school year next
year. That is a very, very strong figure.
What we found with the aged-care
workforce, when we put in place the mandate for vaccination, we were down in
the 20 or 30 per cent vaccination rate. By the time the mandate came into
effect, we were over 99 per cent. That is what happens with these things. We
overcome apathy and people's time constraints and the like by making
sure that we have an imperative to get it done, and that is what we are doing.
What
ordinarily happens—it happened during the last government, during the
boom in the late 2000s, early 2011–12—is we have to come
up with innovative measures to get additional staff into the workforce should
there be staff shortfalls. The easiest way of avoiding all that is for the
education workforce to get vaccinated.
The SPEAKER: Member for Roe,
with a supplementary question.
Ms S.E. Winton: Don't
do it, ''Rocky''!
The SPEAKER: Member for
Wanneroo, we do not need a comment from you at the end of every answer that is
given and every question that is asked.