Member for Stirling Terry Redman today warned the State Government against eroding key regional services under the cover of the statewide labour shortage, saying regional communities would not be duped by such tactics.
Mr Redman said rather than exploiting the labour shortage to undermine rural services, the Government needed to concentrate on appropriate incentives to keep workers in country areas.
“The current labour market squeeze is playing right into the Government’s hands by presenting them with a ready-made excuse for downsizing country health and police services,” Mr Redman said.
“A case-in-point is the decision to close a mobile dental service to south coast schools on the grounds that a replacement can’t be found for a staff member taking leave.
“You really would have to question just how much time and effort was put into locating a replacement to ensure that this crucial service remained operational.”
Mr Redman said it was a similar situation with the closure of regional police stations, and in the current labour shortage it was clearly becoming far too easy and too convenient for the Government to justify such closures under the guise of operational staffing decisions.
“My concern is that regional services are the most vulnerable to a tight labour market and we need to be increasingly vigilant to ensure that vulnerability is not exploited,” he said.
“Rural communities will not be duped by attempts to cut services by stealth.”
Mr Redman said that next week’s State Budget must include significant funding for strategic incentives to encourage people into the regional service industries that are so essential to the growing needs of regional communities.
“We have to guard against any potential for the Government to throw its hands in the air and claim that they can’t re-open the Cranbrook police station because there aren’t enough staff at Tambellup or Wagin stations,” he said.
“Unless the State Government gets serious about this issue we will see increasing deterioration of regional services, with some communities losing established infrastructure as a result,” he said.
“If we can’t address that by funding appropriate incentives in our current times of prosperity, then we need to have a very close look at our priorities.”