Page 1706 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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MS FITZHARRIS: The schools have a strong duty of care. As far as Transport Canberra goes, I mentioned previously that of course all its staff but particularly bus drivers have a duty of care as well.
MISS C BURCH: Minister, who is responsible for a duty of care for children that are then made to wait at bus interchanges for long periods under the new network?
MS FITZHARRIS: Children have long waited at bus interchanges to connect to other buses. That was the case last month, last year and the year before that. Again, I would like to say that one of the reforms that we have made is to ensure that there are customer service assistants working at interchanges. They are working very closely with the community and taking a particular interest in assisting any schoolchildren who may need assistance as they are travelling through interchanges.
What I can advise in terms of interchanging is that across the network, interchanging in the same two-week period as the first two weeks of the new bus network there were on average 1.3 interchanges per journey. This year under the new network there have been 1.37 interchanges. I do have figures for schoolchildren—they are comparable figures—but to further clarity, I will take that question on notice.
Schools—cleaning services
MS CODY: My question is to the Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development. Minister, why has the government decided to insource cleaning services in ACT public schools?
MS BERRY: I thank Ms Cody for her question. The government has for some time been concerned about the treatment of vulnerable workers in our community. Within my portfolio responsibilities I have been particularly focused on improving the employment conditions of government school cleaners who have been engaged by contracted service providers. These workers are employed to do often undervalued work in an industry where low pay and unfair and insecure employment are, unfortunately, structurally entrenched.
The government has high standards for ethical, industrially compliant employment and is particularly focused on supporting workers who are vulnerable to exploitation because of issues like the industry context and/or factors like English literacy or age. Achieving the government’s high standards is difficult in the cleaning industry where margins are tight and the services are much the same. The required contract management has also proven very demanding.
The government has made numerous enhancements to contracts and contract management, with the aim of ensuring ethical, industrially compliant employment for government school cleaners. It has become clear, though, through this process that achieving the government’s high standards of cleaning in our schools is best achieved through insourcing. Therefore the government has decided that from the beginning of 2020 the government will directly employ a cleaning workforce to clean government schools.
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