Union ramps up fight against Qld job cuts

18 Jul 2012, 6:04 pm   -   Source: AAP

The union representing public servants says it will spend $1.4 million on an advertising campaign against Queensland government cuts to jobs and services.

Billboards, televisions, papers and online media will be splashed with union advertisements lambasting the Queensland government's public service job cuts.

The union for public servants, Together, has a $5 million "fighting fund", and $1.4 million of that will be spent on an advertising campaign, secretary Alex Scott says.

"We need the community to be part of our fight and understand what services they'll lose because of job cuts," he told AAP.

Mr Scott called on politicians west of the Great Dividing Range to stand up for their communities and join the fight.

Vital services cost more in regional communities, but those communities are the ones that can't afford to lose them, he says.

Both Premier Campbell Newman and Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney said on Wednesday that regional Queensland would not be immune from job cuts.

Mr Newman said the only alternative to job cuts was raising taxes.

"If we ask Queenslanders to pay more tax to close the deficit that would cost a family of four $2400 this financial year," he said.

"I'm not going to do it, I refuse to do it.

"... It's about time the unions told people, their members, the facts of life."

On Wednesday, the government revealed it had pulled funding on June 30 for a trial of a program to help domestic violence victims in Rockhampton.

On Tuesday, the government announced the Darling Downs Correctional Centre, southwest of Toowoomba, would close and its 140 male prisoners and 40 work camp prisoners would be relocated.

The 40 full-time staff would be relocated or offered redundancy.

On Monday, the Skilling Queensland for Work program, which helps disadvantaged people enter the workforce, was axed and 144 jobs cut, most in regional communities.

And employees in the Department of Education, Training and Employment were offered voluntary redundancies on Wednesday.

Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) president John Battams announced a mass rally on September 12 or 13 following the state budget, which could bring more job losses.

"The government has been too pre-emptive, too crash-through in its approach, too harsh without really seeing through the effects of their actions," he told reporters on Wednesday.

The QCU will hire two experts - Professor Robert Walker, honorary professor of accounting at the University of Sydney, and Dr Betty Con Walker - to review the Peter Costello audit of the state's books and the resulting "slash-and-burn" approach to cost cutting.

Mr Battams says it's imperative to know "what the real figures say - not what the LNP wants us to believe they say".

The experts' report is due in September.

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