Government submission to IRC rebutted

Mr S Prince, representing the Industrial Relations Minister, addresses the IRC in the successful attempt to reopen the salaries case.

by Dennis Long

Federation evidence delivered to the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) on May 26 rejected the "further economic evidence" on which the NSW Government based its successful application to re-open the salaries case.

Federation evidence quoted the interim judgment of the IRC that "the New South Wales economy is in good shape at the present time and the outlook is favourable". Federation's submission was that this remained the case.

Noting the IRC's Full Bench had indicated that its final decision was "imminent", Federation said it did "not want to change that state of affairs by calling evidence". However, the Federation submission systematically responded to the new Government evidence.

Federation quoted the IRC judgment about the re-opening of the case that "there was no suggestion that the state of the economy...had deteriorated to the extent it precluded any further salary increases for teachers" and that "the projected budget decline may not be a basis, of itself, for denying fair and reasonable rates of pay to teachers".

The main body of the Federation evidence concluded "although the Federation opposed the reopening of the evidence, this was based on principle and not on the basis that any new evidence would affect the merits of the Federation's case. Indeed the new evidence supports rather than detracts from the submissions originally made by the Federation".

Federation also presented amendments to the written submissions given last year. Some of these amendments were:

• Standard and Poors has observed that any changes to the State's AAA credit rating would require scenarios that appear "highly unlikely".
• The NSW Government "had not adequately budgeted for these matters" but that it "was able to take action to remedy the problem that the Government had created".
• The revised budgetary figures arise "in part from the failure of the budget forecasts to include a realistic figure for wage increases".
• The possibility of a decrease in relative share of Commonwealth Grants and GST going to NSW was known to the NSW Government and that from 2004-5 onwards NSW will receive more revenue from the GST than they would have under the previous system.
• Contrary to budget forecasts, employment growth has strengthened and consumer demand has strengthened.
• Recovery in farm output should provide a strong boost to rural incomes.
• General government underlying net debt at June 2004 is now expected to be below the budget estimate.
• The balance of global economic data released since the Budget has been increasingly buoyant.

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005