Members push for free public transport, school funding and council rate changes ahead of election
Victorian Labor members will press the Allan government to permanently waive public transport fares, fully fund state schools and scrap council rates at the party’s final state conference before switching to election mode.
However, the Healthcare Workers Union will not be able to vote or attend the event after officially starting the process of leaving the Labor Party on instructions from the union’s national office.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Jacinta Allan will deliver a speech to the party faithful in what will be a soft start to Labour’s election campaign, urging members to help Labor win a historic fourth consecutive term in November.
The conference’s proximity to the campaign has not stopped unions and local party branches from using the event to petition for major policy changes that will form part of Labour’s agenda.
Among the decisions to be discussed in this article is an initiative to make public transportation permanently free. This month’s state budget locks in half-price tickets for the second half of this year, following the end of two months of free tickets.
“The cost of living crisis caused by Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East will not end on May 31,” the motion states.
Another resolution by the Australian Services Union calls on the government to remove the current cap on council rates. Former prime minister Daniel Andrews has announced annual caps on how much councils can raise interest rates based on inflation to protect taxpayers from uncontrolled increases.
ASU last year passed a motion calling on the government to lift the caps by March this year, arguing that they were delaying workers’ wages. The panel, which will discuss the issue again, called on the government to find a new way to set rates, including to better reflect councils’ running costs, population size and wages.
“Victoria Labor’s reintroduction of the Kennett government’s rate cap in 2016, ostensibly as a way to reduce household and business taxes, continues to fail Victorians,” the motion says.
The ruling argues Allan’s government has breached the party’s policy platform, which has pledged to ensure councils do not use rate caps to reduce services or undermine industrial relations from 2022. ASU also argues that the interest rate cap harms local government services, especially in rural, regional and disadvantaged communities.
Other motions include a resolution calling on the government to meet its Gonski funding obligations, known as the School Resource Standard, by 2028 at the latest as originally planned.
This imprint previously revealed that the Allan government had delayed the timetable to fund 75 per cent of the resource standard, with the Commonwealth collecting the rest until 2031. $2.4 billion cut from public schools.
Last week, Education Minister Ben Carroll signed an interim agreement with the Australian Education Union that, if approved by members, could help meet these obligations by providing pay rises of 28 to 32 per cent over four years for teachers, principals and other staff.
Another motion calls for VicHealth to remain independent, fighting against the government’s plan to eliminate it as an independent body and subsume it within the Department of Health for the first time since it was established by the Cain government.
The Health Workers Union will not be among the unions represented at the conference. The union, which has been in administration since the Fair Work Commission laid legal charges against former secretary Diana Asmar, stopped paying membership dues after being ordered to cut ties with the Labor Party.
Manager Charlie Donnelly, the former National Union of Workers national secretary, failed to maintain the HWU’s relationship with Victorian Labor, but the union’s federal office took the matter to the Fair Work Commission and won.
Health Services Union national secretary Lloyd Williams argued that the Victoria HWU branch was bankrupt and owed huge debts to the Revenue Office, meaning the branch should focus on financial management rather than paying membership fees.
The conference was to take place on the eve of the release of the corruption watchdog’s long-awaited report into Operation Richmond, which is investigating the government’s dealings with the United Firemen’s Association.
However, on Thursday the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission [IBAC] He announced that the report, which was expected to be published next week, would be postponed due to facing new court proceedings.
Legal battles have already contributed to the report’s delayed release. The investigation has been ongoing since at least 2019.
In its statement, IBAC said, “We remain determined to publish the special report, which is ready for publication until the trials are concluded.”
It is unclear who made the final objection to prevent the report from being published.
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