Country Mayors Association of NSW

Did I hear unopposed? Should we all have elections like that? Fantastic

And of course, Daria Turley, the President of Local Government New South Wales, and I saw Jamie counting your votes all in the front there. So great. And his contribution really can't go and acknowledge because he, during my time as a new minister, was probably one of the first to come and engage with me.

And I've got such a great relationship with Rick as well. So it's great to have so many friends in the room.

And I just want to just before I start a little hands up, who was here before that one when I think Ken Keith got me before the last election, that gotcha, when I was repping the Premier, then do you remember that who was here? Then? Well, I'm not going to make this make mistakes.

I'm going to stick to my script today.

Anyway, it's all good to see you and to step in for the Premier. He was, he did meet with a few of you, because Regional Cities was on yesterday, I think, and the central west, JO and and I was wondering why there was so many mayors in town, but I thought you all heading up to Tamworth for Sunday, so I'll see you all there as well I'm sure.

Look, it is a big job being a mayor, and I know that there was quite a turnover at the last elections, and a lot of change within the numbers of councillors around and so is it going to be a big moment, I guess, of settling in, and from before I go into sort of the Premier's conversation and remarks, I will say I'm writing out to all of you. I've been signing letters busily over the last couple of days, just to kind of put a bit of context around some things like disaster recovery funding, the active transport grants that are available, and all those sorts of things that the reason is all those sorts of things you raise with me all the time. But anyway, I will get back to the business.

Obviously, this conference is focusing on skills and education, ensuring that we have a workforce that is prepared for the future.

And I know that that is something that the Premier is very passionate about, that question of making sure country towns have that workforce they need is something that is really core business for our government.

So some of you might have heard me speak before about the four kind of key priorities of our government; housing, essential workers, getting the energy roadmap back on track and debt reduction so that we're not paying the equivalent of the interest on that debt, which we are at the moment, which is the entire TAFE and police budget to reduce debt. So we need to do a lot of budget repair.

Now, the Premier has talked to me about the firefighter test when it comes to towns. That's the test for cities and towns and the firefighters risking their life to stop a town burning down. Can they actually afford to live in that town?

And when we were elected, we had really that test was not being met. We had more teachers resigning than retiring for the first time ever. And of those teacher shortages, over half, about 55% were in regional and rural schools, and in a single year, we had lost over 12% of our nursing workforce.

We're seeing record numbers of police leaving the profession without enough recruits to fill the gaps. And as we know, all of those shortages hit hardest in regional communities, and that's why we have really acted to arrest those gaps.

So things like doubling the incentives for health workers in the regions from 10 to $20,000 and I can report that since then, recruitments and retentions have actually surged in rural health and we know that there's more than 2000 health workers who have taken up that incentive and are now working in our hospitals.

And I know in my hospital in Maitland we've had a 10% increase in staffing since the last election, which is a really significant change. Not enough. We know there's always more to do, but it's heading in the right direction.

Last year, we announced paid study for our recruits at Goulburn you know if you’ve ever been down there it's a great facility, and that was a real game changer.

You know, four months out of your life with no wage is a lot as a big commitment for a career that you haven't started. And what we've seen since that is 2000 applications for new police. That's a 50% rise on the same time last year. And I know that the Police Minister, Yasmin Catley has talked about this. I think the current intake is the largest we've had. There was no gaps or no vacancies in that intake.

And at the same time, we've made more than 16,000 teachers and support staff permanent so they can plan their lives, particularly in country New South Wales and that's been a really big thing, I think, in the quality of education we've seen, I think that Premier was talking about in question time this week, something like a 24% drop in cancelled classes. So where, you know, kids are not being taught, they're just filling in time because there's no teacher available to teach them. That's reduced. So very encouraging signs and that those incentives are working.

We're always open to hearing more ideas, and obviously that's what we want to do.

But if we go to the issue around skills and apprenticeships, they have plummeted over the last decade. We're up against two problems here. We've got an aging workforce and a skill shortage, and that's been why earlier this year, we made that decision to directly support local councils to hire new apprentices and trainees a $252 million benefit to hire 1300 apprentices across every council in New South Wales. So I really would be keen to hear about how that is going.

Because, you know, that's 1300 new mechanics, electricians and landscapes and plumbers and planning cadets. I know in my transport portfolio, we have 69 regional transport apprentices and trainees, and they're doing things as diverse as landscaping, sign design and electrical fitting and engineering as well. So these are growing the skills of our young people across local government, across government. The apprenticeships will start to plug those gaps and it will let those younger Australians learn from experienced colleagues. And we know that every council is going to benefit from the injection of that talent, but it will be a big deal in regions and in the bush where, you know, we don't always have those opportunities for young people.

We don't want to see young people having to leave town to get those opportunities. It gives them the pathways for formal training.

And in addition to that, we've also just announced the delivery of the new three TAFE Centres of Excellence across New South Wales. We just announced one in the Hunter region, which I know I can see Sue Moore there, and a Digby from Dungog there is a few of you the glasses out about then, but that is really exciting. A $60 million investment there.

That education focus, it's really important to have it as people are thinking about work and getting ready for it. That's why the skills space is important. But we also know that we have to get those first steps on the educational journey happening right.

I'm a huge advocate for preschool. My mum gave me the gift of teaching me to read at the age of three and it's a lifelong benefit and skill.

And so Prue Car, as Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning, has rolled out an announcement of 100 new preschools, of which I think it's 49 in the regions, and they are being built.

So the beauty of those is, in most cases, they're on the site of a school. And so what that means is that transition from early education to primary school is much easier, and they are targeting a lot of those areas where we really do need to help get those literacy levels up.

Data tells us that those regional and remote areas across the state have some of the lowest levels of childcare and early learning preschool access, and so places like you know, Dubbo, Bathurst, Singleton, are some of the worst affected, and that universal access to preschool in those 100 new public preschools across New South Wales will make a big difference.

We were just in Broken Hill with a whole cabinet last week where we announced an extra 200 additional childcare places will be created across far western New South Wales.

And you know, having grown up in a remote community with my children, I had my son when I lived at Walcha 1600 people in community. You do really understand that without those access, that access to childcare, it does make a difference for women, particularly, but all carers getting back in the workforce and knowing that their children are still having those opportunities.

And when you see kids interacting at that age, playing with different kids different backyards, you realise how important it is for their socialisation too. It's not just about getting parents back to work. It's about getting the kids on that early stepping stone into big school and huge help of course, for families, they won't have to fork out so much as they did for that last year of childcare, particularly when both mum and dad are working and the subsidies might not be as high for them.

As I said, we had some great news this week about teacher vacancy rates, that 24% fewer vacancies in term three this year than the same time last year.  

And we found that schools that have traditionally been difficult to staff have all seen a job, sorry, surge in the job openings being filled. And so you know, when we talking about schools that are difficult to staff at times that might be like there's a 39% increase in rural North that's Grafton, Northern Tablelands and Armidale, a 20% in rural south and west. So that's Orange, Griffith and Albury.

Now, I don't want to go on reading speeches, you know, if you've heard me before, it's not my go. But I do want to really thank country mayors for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of the Premier and he really does send his apologies for not being able to be here.

I do really want to say thank you to country mayors. And I'm actually for me, this was, like, very exciting to be here, because I always enjoy the opportunity to engage with this group.

It is where we as politicians are able to learn from, right across the perspective of regional New South Wales, and get you know, not just the regional centers, like where I come from, but also those more rural and remote areas and the challenges you've got in giving us that opportunity to tweak our policies and programs so that they really are providing a good standard of living for everyone in our state, not just in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.

Life is too short for endless political bickering, and particularly this far out from an election, we don't go to the polls in New South Wales until March 2027, so you’re stuck with us for the next two years.

What I'm saying is, whatever our politics, whatever our backgrounds, we're on the same team, which is team New South Wales, and I want to again, thank you for the learnings we get from these conversations. Thanks again for having me.