Unions respond to federal budget

“Measures in Tuesday night’s budget designed to improve housing affordability have been welcomed by education unions, although ongoing concerns about disability funding and teacher workload remain. The Australian Education Union had been calling for the federal government to address worsening inequality across Australia’s schools, warning that rising housing costs, workforce pressures and funding shortfalls were undermining the sector’s stability. AEU federal president Correna Haythorpe said the budget’s changes to negative gearing and housing tax will help address housing affordability for teachers, saying that it was importantly about “fairness”. “[The] tax measures will help make housing fairer and more affordable for teachers, principals and education support staff who deserve to live in the communities in which they serve.” “We have members across Australia who cannot afford to live in the communities they teach in. Many are locked out of house ownership and impacted by rising rents which impacts on the retention of staff and contributes to workforce shortages.” The union said it had concerns about the changes to the NDIS announced prior to the budget, and “the $472 million in savings to disability funding in schools” announced on Tuesday. “There are more than 200,000 students in the public school system who have been assessed as having a disability, yet receive no disability loadings. At the same time, we have seen disability funding to private schools grow by $1.4 billion from 2020 to 2024,” Ms Haythorpe said. An AEU survey of public school principals found that schools were reallocating an average of $147,000 from other parts of their budgets to support students with disability, which had flow-on effects to workload. The Independent Education Union (IEU), while praising the budget’s focus on housing affordability and cost of living, said Tuesday’s announcements “missed an opportunity to build on the education reforms and positive changes introduced over the past four years by the ALP government.” One of these was for the federal government to play a stronger leadership role in helping schools manage teacher workloads. “Practical measures under the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan should be revisited and updated to ensure a consistent national effort to address what is the most pressing problem in school workplaces,” the union said.

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