Carmel Tebutt MP, the State minister for health, said at the event in Sydney: “The printing industry is an extremely important industry for NSW in terms of jobs and the services it provides to our community, but also its role in the future as we face up to the challenges of technological changes.”
Printing Industries chief executive Philip Andersen said to the minister: “One of the things that concerns a lot of people in the print industry is the apparent perception of government that printing is not necessarily an environmentally sustainable industry.”
Tebutt (pictured) said that it was not the view of the NSW government that print wasn’t sustainable, but said government agencies were under pressure to reduce both waste and costs.
JDA Print Recruitment’s James Cryer reiterated the concern during the event, which was held at the Le Montage function centre in Lilyfield, Sydney.
“We get getting the impression that sometimes governments succumb to popular perceptions and that there may be some kind of implicit discouragement of paper in favour of electronic media,” said Cryer.
He asked for reassurance that “bureaucrats of the public service are not being encouraged against paper in favour of online or email”.
The minister responded by saying: “Government agencies – like any other sector of the economy – are trying to do more with less.”
She said all agencies were committed to reducing their costs to deliver more resources into frontline services.
“I couldn’t not support that as the health minister, who is responsible for an ever-growing budget that needs to grow even more to support the health needs of our community, we have to try to make savings in our back-office operations,” said Tebutt.
She said that she “obviously a saw a role for printed communications and for paper”, but said the government was “not in the business of propping up the paper industry”.
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