Palaszczuk earmarks $107m to lure teachers

Annastacia Palaszczuk will spend $107 million to help entice extra teachers to work for the Queensland government.

Annastacia Palaszczuk launches the campaign on the Gold Coast.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will spend $107 million to help entice extra teachers to work for the state government, in the latest campaign policy to bolster the public service. Labor has hired more than 16,000 new full-time-equivalent public servants during Ms Palaszczuk’s term, with the state’s taxpayers now supporting a bureau­cracy of 217,578 full-time-equiv­alent workers.

In the absence of a policy to pay down the state’s debt, or introduce other economic reforms, a hallmark of Ms Palaszczuk’s campaign has been further boosting the numbers of teachers, nurses, police and other public servants.

Labor has used this to remind Queenslanders of the 14,000 public service jobs slashed by the former Newman government when now-Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls was treasurer.

At her campaign launch yesterday, Ms Palaszczuk said the $107m would be used — not to pay for new teachers — but to attract them, by creating transition programs for other professions to become teachers, establishing teacher centres of excellence, and reviewing the incentives available for recruiting interstate teachers.

“We have restored our frontline (with) more doctors and nurses for our hospitals, more teachers for our schools, and more police, more ambulance officers, more firefighters, more child safety officers in our communities,” Ms Palaszczuk said in her speech to the party faithful.

On the first full day of campaigning, at the Proserpine hospital in the north Queensland LNP swing seat of Whitsunday, Ms Palaszczuk promised to hire an extra 3500 nurses, midwives, and nurse navigators over four years — which essentially keeps up with demand in the sector.

She will also employ 3700 new teachers (after employing 3450 new teachers and 1000 additional teacher aides this term) and an extra 500 police if re-elected.

Besides adding to the ranks of Queensland’s state employees, the chief policy announcement of Labor’s re-election campaign came out of left field: the Premier’s announcement that she would veto a federal loan to Adani to build a rail line in the Galilee Basin.

The ensuing controversy around Adani overshadowed other policy announcements.

At her brief Gold Coast campaign launch yesterday, Ms Palaszczuk said Labor would spend $50m to extend the $20,000 First Home Owners’ Grant for six months until June next year.

In an expansion of the Back to Work program — which has already received extra funding this campaign, Ms Palaszczuk announced employers would be eligible for $20,000 for employing older jobseekers.

She also told the launch she would give an extra $20m to Screen Queensland to try to attract more movie blockbusters and television series to Queensland.