Why I'm Voting No to the Revised VGSA Offer

That is the Secretary of the Department of Education, Tony Bates, in an email that landed in my inbox at 8:03 last Friday morning.

My union's email arrived at 8:37. The employer briefed me on my own pay deal 34 minutes before my own union could. Nothing says confidence in your offer quite like racing your workforce's representatives to the inbox.

I'm an Education Support worker. I've now read the offer, the salary tables and the Dimensions of Work document properly, and I'll be voting no. I want to walk you through why, with the numbers to back it, because I imagine plenty of you got that email, saw "28%", and thought the fight was over.

It isn't. Honestly, it's barely started.

The 28% headline

Here is how the "at least 28%" is actually built for ES staff. Around 13% arrives in 2026. Then the last three years deliver 4%, 4% and 4.9%.

Now put those numbers next to the real world. Inflation is currently running at 4.0% a year. The Reserve Bank's underlying measure sits at 3.6% and is climbing, with energy prices pushing forecasts higher. So after year one, this deal offers rises that roughly match the cost of living, and may fall behind it.

And we would be strapped to that treadmill until 17 July 2030, with no mechanism to revisit it. Queensland's teacher aides accepted an agreement this year with a CPI uplift clause built in: if Brisbane inflation outruns their pay rise, their wages are topped up automatically. Victoria's offer contains nothing like it. You are being asked to bet four years of your household budget on inflation behaving itself. Look at your last power bill and tell me how that bet is going.

What we do versus what we're paid

The department's own Dimensions of Work document lists what an ES employee at Level 1 Range 2 can be required to do. Toileting, meals and lifting. Medical intervention support requiring specialised training. Managing distressed and challenging behaviour in the classroom. Communication support in AUSLAN and braille.

Under this offer, that person starts on $63,959 from October 2026.

For context: the average full-time wage in Australia is now about $106,700. The median across all employees, part-timers included, is about $74,700. So the person changing a continence aid, managing a meltdown and delivering a medical procedure before recess would start more than $10,000 below the median wage and more than $40,000 below the average full-time wage. And many ES staff work part-time or term-time hours, so the amount actually hitting the bank account is lower again.

These are not unskilled jobs. These are not optional extras. These are the roles holding inclusion together in every school in the state, and this offer prices them below the middle of the pack.

A big percentage of a small wage is still a small wage. Percentages look good in a press release. Dollars pay the rent.

Old money in a new box

The department presents converting the ES annual allowance into salary as a headline win. It is a genuine structural improvement, because salary flows into super and leave in ways an allowance doesn't. But call it what it is: money that was already on the table in May, rewrapped. Extending the intensive care allowance to Range 2 ES who already do intensive care work isn't generosity either. It is fixing something that should never have been broken.

Now look where the durable new commitments went. The halving of meeting hours from 80 to 40 applies to teachers. The 1% annual lump sum goes to top of scale classroom teachers. The face to face teaching deed runs to 2032, two full years past the agreement itself. I don't begrudge my teaching colleagues any of it. They earned every line. But when the lasting protections flow one way and ES get a rewrapped allowance plus inflation-level rises, the Secretary's word "equivalence" is doing work it cannot support.

The deadline

The Secretary's email warns that delay makes it unlikely we can secure additional salary this year. Sign by the end of July, or the money slips away.

I don't like that stance at all. That is not bargaining. That is a deadline held over the lowest paid people in our schools, delivered through an email that deliberately went around their union. Western Australia found $65 a week in flat rises for its education assistants two years running. Queensland found inflation protection. Victoria can find both. It just needs a workforce that refuses to be rushed.

What a no vote means

Voting no is not walking away from a pay rise. It is telling the government the job isn't finished: that ES pay must be measured in dollars against the actual cost of living, that a four-year lock-in needs inflation protection, and that respect for school staff includes respect for their union.

The government moved once after May was rejected. It can move again.

So read the offer yourself. Check my numbers against the references below. Turn up to your union meeting, ask the hard questions, and when the ballot comes, vote like the next four years of your pay depend on it.

Because they do.

References