Opinion
Want more staff at rat-infested Banksia Hill? Pay them more
Hamish Hastie
ReporterIf constantly feeling unsafe at work, dodging rat droppings while making your sandwich and smelling the rotting flesh of said dead rats sounds all right to you, then please consider a career in Western Australia’s juvenile justice system.
It might seem like I’m being facetious, but these are cold hard truths that the Inspector of Custodial Services witnessed himself during a 10-day visit to Banksia Hill in February, prompting him to declare the facility was “failing in every element”.
Rat faeces was spotted all over the facility.Credit: OICS
A read of inspector Eamon Ryan’s report reveals staffing issues are ultimately at the heart of most of the issues in the facility: more staff means less time kids are locked in their cells and more opportunities for detainees to take part in rehabilitation programs.
But recruiters have their work cut out for them – Banksia Hill is as far removed from the beanbag and ping-pong employment haven of Google as any modern workplace could be.
Another cold hard truth the government must address is that youth custodial officers don’t get paid enough.
The same could be said for other frontline workforces but given the literal emergency facing the centre and the healthy state of the government’s budget, it makes sense for the government to depart from its rigid 3 per cent or $3120 public sector-wide pay-rise offer.
Alternatively, they could act quicker to complete a review of the current pay bands that the centre’s workforce sits at, which I understand is mostly at the base rate of $64,172, plus about $12,000 in shift allowances.
This places Banksia Hill in a similar salary range to other youth detention centres in other states, but way out of step with the pay packet a completely unskilled person could waltz into in WA’s mining industry.
For some perspective, in 2007 – straight out of high school – I worked as a driller’s offsider in an underground nickel mine for $65,000 a year.
A quick Seek search last week came up with plenty of driller’s offsider jobs that offer between $100,000 and $140,000 a year with training offered on the job.
Fortunately, the government has recently agreed to pay all Banksia Hill staff an extra $4.32 an hour, or about $200 a week, while the review is ongoing, but I doubt that will be enough to stop the Banksia Hill staffing death spiral.
According to Ryan, Banksia Hill has 254 positions for custodial staff, from youth custodial officers to senior officers, but when he was inspecting the facility, there were about 50 staff off on workers’ compensation claims and about 20 officer vacancies.
In 2022, there were 50 resignations or retirements that eroded the impact of having 83 recruits start and by February there had already been 16 resignations for the year.
Some rudimentary arithmetic shows throwing an extra $10,000 at each staff member in the centre would cost the state $2.54 million a year.
This figure is 0.2 per cent of the $1.2 billion Metronet cost blowout revealed in last month’s budget, and 0.7 per cent of the anticipated $3.3 billion surplus.
Seems a price worth paying.
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