Opposition vs. Government
Alan Carpenter in the Legislative Assembly
21 June 2000

Western Australian teachers are the lowest paid in the country. The minister has said that one of the problems is that we cannot get enough people to go into teaching. Why can we not get people into teaching? One of the problems is that the average age of graduates is 28 years. Is $32 000 an attractive salary package for a 28 year old? Of course it is not. We are facing a massive crisis. The minister knows this: A teacher shortage is looming. The department has done its work on this. At the same time, we are allowing the situation to go on and we are paying our teachers the lowest rates in the country. How stupid can we get? We must pay them more. As I said, teachers do not believe, and would not believe, that the Government will come out tomorrow and say, "We will put you on parity with New South Wales, which is where you were 10 or 15 years ago." In fact, I think the wages were pegged at that stage so that a pay rise in New South Wales flowed on to Western Australia.

What teachers expect and would like is a commitment that the minister understands or accepts that they are underpaid. He can give all the arguments about his budgetary situation, but they want to know that he is committed to reaching a situation at which their salaries are comparable to those in most of the other States...

We need to attract more people into teaching because a crisis is looming. Fifty per cent of Western Australia's teachers will reach retirement age within the next 10 years. However, insufficient graduates are available to replace them....

Primary school teaching requires four years of committed training. A primary school teacher cannot be trained in one year from another course; there is a four-year time lag. We must consider what will be the situation in 2005, how many teachers are likely to retire and how many graduates will be available. Why are they not coming in? We do not pay them enough. They will not become teachers and we will have a crisis on our hands in a few years. Manifestations of the shortage occurred last year and it will be more obvious as time goes on.

From Western Australian Parliament's Hansard website at this link [scroll down 6 pages to page 7995]