Brisbane City Council’s parks, potholes crews slashed to balance $400m budget blackhole

Council staff have revealed where the Lord Mayor’s casual and contractor workforce cuts have been made, with fears the community will suffer.

Already burnt-out Brisbane City Council staff fear the community will suffer as the Lord Mayor’s $400m budget cuts announced late last year hits all departments hard.

While Adrian Schrinner has kept his promise that permanent staff employed directly by the council would be safe, the council’s casual workers and external contractors have been gutted, resulting in services being cut back or put on hold.

Two contracted road maintenance and resurfacing teams have been let go, a reduction of at least 20 per cent.

The green space maintenance team has lost 28 casuals, resulting in a directive to stop doing programmed maintenance and instead adopt a triage approach.

The Services Union conducted separate surveys in October and November of permanent and temporary council staff regarding the planned savings.

“Anyone without a permanent position is likely to lose it … current (permanent) staff are burnt out from covering shifts,” one set of feedback read.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner

“Generally the vibe is that we will have to do the same amount of work, with less money and possibly less people,” a council staffer wrote.

“We fear that it’s the community who will suffer,” another said.

“The majority of this casual labour was filling FTE positions BCC haven’t recruited or filled, so in a roundabout way they’re actually making positions redundant,” one response read.

There have also been changes to backfilling for staff on leave, with backfilled not permitted for employees who take a period of leave greater than two weeks.

“This puts undue pressure on my team and makes me feel guilty for taking leave. It also means I come back to a backlog of work,” a council worker wrote.

The Lord Mayor has already announced savings from Brisbane Metro, construction projects, consultants and a major green bridge.

Mr Schrinner has also committed to leaving public transport, mosquito spraying, kerbside collection and cost of living measures untouched.

Councillor Fiona Cunningham, council’s civic cabinet chair for finance, said despite the budget cuts, the LNP administration had record investment in and road resurfacing.

“We’ve put downward pressure on future household rates and rent by reducing spending across council by 10 per cent, including in areas like advertising, travel, consultants and contractors,” she said.

“The destructive Green/Labor coalition of chaos has opposed our savings and continue to make reckless big-spending promises that would drive up rates and rent costs for all Brisbane residents.”

The Services Union Queensland branch secretary Neil Henderson

The Services Union Queensland branch secretary Neil Henderson said in the grand scheme of $400m in cuts, he did not believe reducing temporary staff would make much of a dent.

“They would have to be exceptionally well paid contractors. So we’re a bit bemused at this stage,” he said.

“But we’ve got very strong agreements in place with the Council about the treatment of retrenchments and the Council is complying with those obligations.

“The council gave us an outline of how things are travelling just before Christmas, and this year is an enterprise bargaining renewal year, with negotiations due to start around Easter.”

Council opposition leader Jared Cassidy blamed the need for $400m in savings on the Lord Mayor’s “mismanagement” of major projects such as Green Bridges and Brisbane Metro.

“This is not only affecting service delivery in the suburbs on basics like potholes, footpaths, road resurfacing and tree trimming, it’s also affecting people’s lives,” Mr Cassidy said.

Brisbane City Council Labor leader Jared Cassidy. Picture: Richard Walker

“These workers who have been kept on as temporary for too long … there are dozens of them who were told around Christmas time that they were no longer needed.”

With the council elections in March, and big money projects such as the Metro and Green Bridges to be finished this year, Mr Cassidy said Labor would overhaul the budget, if elected.

“What we’re saying is that from the next budget on, if Labor is in administration, we will do things very differently in council,” he said.

“We’re saying the council budget should be fairly and squarely focused on service delivery in the suburbs, investing in local infrastructure projects for better traffic congestion, public transport, parks and sporting facilities.”