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Speaker 1: And well.

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Speaker 2: Joining us on the line right now is Jarvis Ryan,

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Speaker 2: the Northern Territory Education Union head.

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Speaker 1: Good morning to you, Jervis, good to be with you, Katie.

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Speaker 2: Now Jarvis, firstly, can I just ask we just catching

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Speaker 2: up with Kay Densley from the CPSU about the public

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Speaker 2: service wage freeze. What is the situation for the education

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Speaker 2: Union members. Do they agree to this wage freeze or

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Speaker 2: are they against it?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Very much against, Katie. And we have members in

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Speaker 3: school support roles under that same general agreement, the General

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Speaker 3: public Sector Agreement, and they've overwhelmingly rejected the offer and

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Speaker 3: we've communicated that to the Commissioner. We will be joining

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Speaker 3: the other unions with the rally outside of Parliament next

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Speaker 3: Tuesday to make that message very well known. With the teachers.

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Speaker 3: We're still in negotiations at this stage. Our agreement expires

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Speaker 3: next month, but we will expect a similar response that

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Speaker 3: the thousand dollars which is not in dexter salary over

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Speaker 3: four years, it's just not going to cut it, particularly

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Speaker 3: when you look at Victoria's offering sign on bonuses of

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Speaker 3: up to fifty thousand dollars for teachers as a national

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Speaker 3: teacher shortage. The problems only going to get worse, and

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Speaker 3: the anti government has to wake up to the reality

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Speaker 3: of that if you don't pay competitive salaries, you will

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Speaker 3: not recruit people to the territory, let alone keep them here.

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Speaker 1: And is that the concern Jarvis?

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Speaker 2: Like when we talk about education staff and those support

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Speaker 2: staff and teachers as well, if those wages are frozen,

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Speaker 2: do you think that we're actually going to lose experienced teachers?

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Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean I talk with people if people may

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Speaker 3: not be aware of just how difficult it is right

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Speaker 3: now to fill particularly specialist positions. So we're talking about counselors,

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Speaker 3: people have skills around working with students with special needs,

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Speaker 3: people in senior leadership positions. We're talking about really specialized

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Speaker 3: areas that there's a lot of positions, particularly in the

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Speaker 3: heart of the staff regions like Alice Springs and the Barkley.

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Speaker 3: We're having trouble right now. I've had Principles openly talk

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Speaker 3: about what they call a staffing shortage or a staffing crisis.

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Speaker 3: And you know what that means is people who might

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Speaker 3: want to take long service leave and things like that,

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Speaker 3: those requests are not all that readily granted because of

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Speaker 3: the difficulty of backfilling teachers who go and leave and

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Speaker 3: things like that. So we've sort of been warning about

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Speaker 3: this for several years. The government here, I think, has

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Speaker 3: taken a lazy approach of employing very large numbers of

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Speaker 3: people on contracts and a very disposable sort of turnover

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Speaker 3: mindset of recruitment and retention. And we're going to begin

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Speaker 3: to see the fruits of it. That's all before we

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Speaker 3: factor in before you wage free, so no people call

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Speaker 3: us up and so what's on the cards in terms

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Speaker 3: of pay for you. This might be a teacher from

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Speaker 3: Queenslands and we come over here and I tell them, well,

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Speaker 3: nothing until twenty twenty five based on the wages offering,

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Speaker 3: Thanks very much, and hang up the phone. So they'll

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Speaker 3: look around elsewhere.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what we don't want to be.

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Speaker 2: You know, we don't want to be losing people, but

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Speaker 2: we also want to make sure that the territory is

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Speaker 2: an attractive place for people to move to. And another

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Speaker 2: topic that you and I spoke about just a week

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Speaker 2: or so ago was about teachers being a little bit

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Speaker 2: concerned about the plan when it comes to COVID over

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Speaker 2: the Christmas period, now, Jarvis, we had a bit of

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Speaker 2: a chat with the Chief mister Michael Gunny yesterday about

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Speaker 2: those vaccination rates and exactly what he is going to

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Speaker 2: change when we reach the eighty percent vaccination rate. If

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Speaker 2: you miss that interview, take a listen to what he

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Speaker 2: had to say.

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Speaker 4: Now, the only jurisdictions that have gone to this lockout

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Speaker 4: phase to borrow that phrase, Victoria and arguably need to

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Speaker 4: have Wales. They're doing it not to get to COVID zero.

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Speaker 4: They're doing it to manage the growth of coronavirus. Want

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Speaker 4: to be clear here, a lockout might be a scenario

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Speaker 4: where we have community transmission non territory and we can't

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Speaker 4: get it back to zero. That's why a lockdown probably

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Speaker 4: remains the best most effective method.

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Speaker 1: So what exactly is going to change here?

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Speaker 4: Well, territory is head of the nation, so we unlike

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Speaker 4: the rest of the country, we have no restrictions here.

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Speaker 2: But so what's like once we get to eighty percent

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Speaker 2: vaccination rate? What exactly is going to change? Is it

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Speaker 2: just going to be that you can maybe quarantine from home?

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Speaker 1: Yes, how much is that going to cost?

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Speaker 2: I know that you have said that it is something

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Speaker 2: that even if you're quarantining from home territory. It's going

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Speaker 2: to have to pay that bill themselves.

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Speaker 4: Mate, I said, we may charge them for the compliance checks.

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Speaker 4: So obviously you can't charge them we're staying at their

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Speaker 4: own house, but obviously it cost money. Or do you

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Speaker 4: compliance in and around someone's staying at their own home

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Speaker 4: for quarantine, We may charge that. That's not decision that

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Speaker 4: we've made. So obviously we're working that through so Jarvis.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not sure whether that actually provides our

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Speaker 2: education staff, our teachers, the certainty that all of us

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Speaker 2: were hoping for. But by the sounds of it, not

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Speaker 2: a great deal is going to change once we reach

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Speaker 2: eighty percent, aside from being able to quarantine at home,

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Speaker 2: but at what cost we're on.

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Speaker 3: Shure, Yeah, and I just know I summon up as follows.

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Speaker 3: I did listen to the interview. So what he's saying

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Speaker 3: is lockdowns will still take place. They'll take place more

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Speaker 3: or less on as low as a single case. Remote

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Speaker 3: communities with low vaccination rates may still be locked down

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Speaker 3: in buy security bubbles. And as you say, the only

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Speaker 3: change is that maybe people could quarantine at home. But

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Speaker 3: to me, this is almost no different to where we

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Speaker 3: were in sort of March April May last year. As

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Speaker 3: you recall, people could quarantine at home. So what I

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Speaker 3: don't get is why the risk profile doesn't change. So

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Speaker 3: Singapore is at eighty percent vaccination. If you look at

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Speaker 3: their numbers they're tracking it, I think it's about five

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Speaker 3: hundred cases a day. Deaths are close to zero, hospitalizations

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Speaker 3: are very very low. So I just think that the

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Speaker 3: Chief ministers saying we have no restrictions here, it's not true.

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Speaker 3: We are still operating on a premise of completely keeping

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Speaker 3: COVID out of the Northern territory. But what that means

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Speaker 3: is you can't go to places like Victoria and New

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Speaker 3: South Wales. You can't plan a holiday for somewhere like

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Speaker 3: Queensland without running the risk of being locked out. And yeah,

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Speaker 3: I'm someone now who is vaccinated and would like to

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Speaker 3: be able to travel. I have family into states. Many

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Speaker 3: people do. But more or less we're being told that

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Speaker 3: despite all of that, despite the vaccination rates going up,

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Speaker 3: there's basically no change. It's how long is it supposed

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Speaker 3: to go on for? I think that's the question we

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Speaker 3: need to be asking, because there's nothing on the table,

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Speaker 3: there's no plan, there's nothing in writing it's just down

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Speaker 3: the track. We may tell you about some changes, but

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Speaker 3: it's to me that's lazy and it's poor. And when

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Speaker 3: you look at what's happening and the rest of the world,

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Speaker 3: where people can travel freely between countries, they've got their

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Speaker 3: schools are going, places like Denmark have got no restrictions

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Speaker 3: in place. I mean, how long do we want to

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Speaker 3: live as the hermit Kingdom?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got to tell you, I was quite surprised

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Speaker 2: when it's said that yesterday.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of the first that.

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Speaker 2: I had heard that, you know, not a great deal

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Speaker 2: else is going to change. And I know that for

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Speaker 2: a lot of Territorians listening, and as you and I

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Speaker 2: have spoken about before, particularly, you know, for teachers who

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Speaker 2: maybe come from another state and wondering whether they're going

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Speaker 2: to come back after that Christmas break, it doesn't provide

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Speaker 2: a huge amount of clarity or a huge amount of

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Speaker 2: certainty for those people.

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Speaker 3: No, And I think there's a number of problems there.

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Speaker 3: One of them which we're all painfully aware of, is

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Speaker 3: we have a very huge ticking time bomb, which is

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Speaker 3: our remote communities. And on the one hand, he's saying that, yes,

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Speaker 3: we need to increase vaccination rates in those communities and

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Speaker 3: everyone would agree. But then he's also saying that if

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Speaker 3: we don't get to those numbers we want to, will

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Speaker 3: still lock down those communities and things like that. So

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Speaker 3: there's no real I don't think unless you actually tell

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Speaker 3: people at a certain point we're going to have to

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Speaker 3: start removing restrictions. There's very little incentive for people to

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Speaker 3: take up the viral take up the vaccine. And one

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Speaker 3: of the concerns I have based on what I've found

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Speaker 3: from reaching out to remote communities, particularly in Central Australia,

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Speaker 3: the vaccines are freely available there. It's not a case

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Speaker 3: of lack of supply. It is clinics have the vaccine

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Speaker 3: and people are actively refusing to get it. They're believing

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Speaker 3: misinformation about things. You know that there's a threat from

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Speaker 3: the vaccine, and from what I understand that there's very

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Speaker 3: little attempts to overcome those that hesitancy. They're not doing

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Speaker 3: community meetings, they're not communicating in local languages, they're not

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Speaker 3: they don't have a strategy in place to actually break

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Speaker 3: through some of those concerns. And I think we're going

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Speaker 3: to get to a situation scene where we're going to

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Speaker 3: have probably very high levels of vaccination in places like

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Speaker 3: ol Springs and Dalen, maybe very low levels of vaccination

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Speaker 3: in communities, will be having to keep the territory border

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Speaker 3: is effectively closed because of that, because of that disjuncture,

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Speaker 3: and that that's going to become I think a real

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Speaker 3: point of contention across across the Northern Territory.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you, and you know, I think

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Speaker 2: that some serious work needs to happen to ensure that

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Speaker 2: that isn't the case. At Javi Shrin. It is always

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Speaker 2: good to catch up with you. I really appreciate your

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Speaker 2: time this morning.

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Speaker 3: Thanks very much, Katie, thank you.

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Speaker 2: That is Javis Shrian there the North from the Northern

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Speaker 2: Territory Education Union