Opinion by WENDY BACON
The NSW public is still waiting for answers to questions about what Transport Minister David Elliott knew about a planned stoppage of the state train network when he went to sleep on Sunday night.
Today Fair Work Commission documents have revealed that NSW Transport made plans as early as last week to shut down the network for two weeks. As Opposition Leader Chris Minns has argued either the Minister knew more than he has said or he is incompetent and completely out of touch with what is happening in his own Department.
What Mr Elliott did know when he went to bed was that he would have breakfast in the morning and that a car would be available to take him wherever he wanted to go.
He slept well because no one rang him to tell him Transport management had initiated the shutdown action. Even if they had rung, he says he wouldn’t have picked up the phone. By the time he was up, thousands of low-paid and other workers were turning on the news or heading straight for their local stations to discover that someone had turned off the rail system in a city of five million people. Others were waking up to find out that the trains that they were relying on to take them to important appointments, work or classes would not be there. Some unable to leave home were anxiously wondering why home care workers that usually help them to shower had not arrived.
By early morning both NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and his Transport Minister knew of the disaster, and they had one thought in common. Blame the Rail, Tram, and Bus Union (RTBU) in the most aggressive language possible. Elliott made the extraordinary claim of accusing the union of ‘terrorist-like’ action. Mr Perrottet seized an opportunity to use one of his favourite rhetorical tactics: “I’m incredibly disappointed in the union”, he said, sounding more like a pompous father talking to a naughty child than the premier of a state. By the time, Prime Minister Scott Morrison got on board, he was thinking of the angry public mood could be turned to his advantage in the coming Federal election. So he tapped into it by commiserating with those forced to take expensive ubers. “Make no mistake this is a coordinated attacks by the unions and the Labor Party.” He was right. Lots of people were forced to spend extra money but that was due to the NSW government.
Unfortunately, some media did what they have always done – amplify lies spoken by powerful people without checking if they were based on fact or providing the other side of the story or even better still, getting the facts themselves and exposing the lies.
Their quick decision to blame the union led to even more unfair treatment of the rank and file railway workers who have kept Sydney’s trains moving during the pandemic. Faced with no trains, some disappointed travellers turned on the news and hearing the government version of the shutdown first, wrongly abused those directly in their line of vision – the workers at the stations – for their wrecked morning.
Railway workers unable to work wasted no time in using social media to contact newsrooms. The union also hit the phones. It didn’t take long for journalists to realise that they were being misled by the NSW government’s outrageous and irresponsible claims. They were forced to change the narrative. It was the NSW government, not the union, that was responsible for the shutdown.
For the rest of the week, the union has pursued their limited campaign of industrial action which is protected by the Fair Work Commission. On Tuesday, Elliott was thanking them for their cooperation.
Since then we have had evasion, unconvincing explanation and continuing blame games from the Premier and his hapless Minister. So much so that not much attention has been paid to the actual impact of the dangerous ‘lockout’ action. This lack of focus on the impacts on the community reflects an insensitivity and arrogance that has become a hallmark of this LNP government.
It’s the same arrogance that lies behind hidden decisions and a failure to listen to community concern about political rorting, massive infrastructure projects that can destroy a community’s quality of life and unfair tolls. WestConnex, the Western Harbour Tunnel, Badgery’s Airport, the destruction of stadiums, the privatisation of buses, the quiet creation of the Greater Sydney Parklands. the budget black hole that is the Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE) and the ex Police Commissioner’s horse racing connections come to mind.
Listening to the community
This week, the Sydney Alliance and the Hunter Community Alliance that consist of a wide range of community groups issued a statement supporting public transport workers in the campaign for improved wages, cleanliness, and safety.
One of the members of the Sydney Alliance is the Older Women’s Network, an organisation that promotes the rights and well-being of older women and is based in Newtown.
Yesterday, OWN’s Chairperson Beverley Baker described the action of shutting down the rail system without notice as an ‘unethical’ action that exposed many older residents who are dependent on care to needless anxiety and delays in medical treatment.
“At a time when the aged care sector is on its knees with furloughed staff, it is beyond belief that they could just stop a vital mode of transport for aged care workers to get to work,” Ms Baker said.
“It should go without saying that it would leave unfilled shifts. Can you imagine what this meant for some people? People not getting fed, or getting a drink, or their medication on time.”
Many aged care workers are poorly paid, do not own cars and live in areas that are reliant on trains. While some would have been able to arrange some other transport to work at short notice, many found their only mode of transport cancelled. OWN pointed out that many aged care residents rely on workers to to help them to get out of bed, go to the bathroom and eat. If workers don’t arrive on time, “it means many more hours when they are unattended”.
“Then there are older people who would have been waiting to get up and get the train to attend much needed medical appointments, some of whom had been waiting for months. For them it could mean another delay – more pain and more suffering,” Ms Baker told City Hub.
Ms Baker said the situation may have been even more distressing for frail, older residents who live at home alone depending on home care workers for assistance. “Older people who are on care levels which require intensive assistance are very dependent on home care workers to help them to get out of bed and to go to the bathroom. For these people, the situation could have been even worse. They would have been waiting anxiously at home unsure why home care workers had not arrived, ” she said.
Responding to Mr Elliott’s statement that even if he had been rung for his approval, he wouldn’t have answered the phone, Ms Baker said, “This level of disregard for the impact of shutting down the rail system is irresponsible and unethical.
“He is able to get up, get dressed and feed himself. There are so many who are reliant on these home care and aged care workers to do precisely that, and on Monday, that whole routine was disrupted, causing so much stress, anxiety, and unnecessary suffering. His job is to improve the rail system, not to shut it down.”
A larger problem
Aged care workers and those who depend on them were not the only ones to express their anger at the NSW government for unnecessarily putting the public in such a distressing situation.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which covers academic staff, was also scathing about the consequences of the act that affected thousands of students looking forward to their first days of face-to-face university after two long years of distance learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers heading to class were also worried about already anxious students not having teachers in front of them.
Dave Belcher, a spokesperson at Community Disability Alliance Hunter, pointed out that public transport is a vital service that is often the only means for people to link with the rest of the community: “Sudden stoppages of service put the health and well-being of people with disability at risk with many being unable to attend medical services or much-needed community engagement,” he said.
But should we be surprised that the Minister’s first response was to blame others rather than show genuine concern for those affected by the fiasco? Before he entered parliament, David Elliott worked for the Civil Contractors Federation, which represents the interests of big road builders, and the Australian Hotels Association which representatives the alcohol interests. So it’s no surprising that vulnerable, disadvantaged and millions of others whose lives were made more difficult by the chaos were not front and centre of his mind when he woke up on Monday morning.
In the recent by-election in Willoughby, a very strong swing against the government to Independent candidate Larissa Penn was a sign that voters are angry that their three years campaign to convince the government that NSW Transport’s Western Harbour Tunnel and Beaches Link projects are a poor transport solution has been treated with contempt.
Last week, thousands of nurses and midwives walked out of major hospitals for 24 hours. Their first strike in a decade was in support of long awaited better pay and staff-to-patient ratios. There was widespread support from a public that is keenly aware of the enormous pressure on health workers during the pandemic.
Today Labor Opposition leader Mr Minns called for the removal of Elliott from his position. Greens Transport spokesperson Abigail Boyd also called for his sacking. “David Elliott was a Perrottet appointee, and responsibility for this massive disruption ultimately rests with him …Perrottet must now act swiftly and decisively to remove Elliott from the portfolio and put someone in the job who can get the trains running”.
Whether the Minister survives the coming weeks or not, the government’s arrogance and insensitivity may finally be catching up with it. The Premier has certainly been exposed as a person who is prepared to lie abut his opponents, rather than accept his own share of what he likes to call ‘personal responsibility’.
