A few months before he won the 2014 state election, Daniel Andrews stood in front a union-organised rally of disability sector workers and promised: “Under a Labor government, mental health care, disability care is not for profit and not for sale”. He received rapturous applause from the 150 workers gathered on the steps of parliament to protest then Liberal premier Denis Napthine’s plan to privatise disability care.

A recording of Andrews’ undertaking was played and replayed to an angry crowd gathered this time on 14 December last year, to protest his government’s about-turn. The rally was hastily organised by the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) after the Labor government quietly announced, in early December, the complete reversal of its pre-election position.

Linking its plans to the roll-out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the government put out a press release saying that public sector disability services will be handed over to the private sector. “The Government will ask not-for-profit and private providers about their interest and readiness to deliver NDIS services to people with disability”, the statement of disability minister Martin Foley reads.

The state government currently employees around 6,000 workers across the public disability sector. The union said it received no warning that the government was ditching its commitment. 

“Fellow workers, we have well and truly been betrayed”, HACSU member Andrea told the hundreds-strong crowd. “I am a young worker in a vulnerable and physically challenging industry. Contracting out services in the disability industry is preposterous”, she said.

“Already, this is a precarious industry and it will become even worse … it will be workers pitted against each other – working for private service providers who don’t care about us or the service users and only care about the bottom line.”

Deb, who has two children in the care of the public disability sector, said she appeared in Daniel Andrews’ election material on the strength of his promise to keep disability care public. “I heard Dan Andrews say it, I heard it, ‘this state is not for sale and there will be no contracting out of staff’”, she said. “I can’t believe he’s broken his promise … I don’t know how they can lie straight in bed.”

On 31 December, a contingent of disability sector workers also joined a Victorian Allied Heath Professional Association (VAHPA) protest outside state government offices. The VAHPA – which represents a broad range of allied health workers, including imaging technicians and occupational therapists – called the protest because of the Andrews government’s refusal to begin bargaining for a new enterprise agreement for public sector workers.

The union served its log of claims in September but heard nothing until the day of the rally. A timetable of discussions is now being agreed, but the union warned that allied health workers won’t accept being treated as a soft touch.