Union hits back at threats Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks will be cancelled due to strike standoff: ‘Nothing to do with us’

The Rail Tram and Bus Union has accused NSW’s police commissioner of ‘resorting to scaring the people’ after she threatened to cancel the New Year’s Eve fireworks. 

RTBU state secretary Toby Warnes lashed top cop Karen Webb and the Minns government during a fiery press conference on Friday. 

He said the union was ‘devastated’ that Ms Webb had threatened to cancel the fireworks display after negotiations with the government fell apart on Thursday. 

It came just hours after the police commissioner said she wouldn’t hesitate in recommending to the state government that the fireworks be cancelled. 

Ms Webb said rail strikes had sparked safety concerns for the 250,000 people who rely on public transport to get in and out of Sydney’s CBD on New Year’s Eve. 

‘If trains aren’t available, and people can’t leave the city, I have very large concerns of the risk that will create to the public because families won’t be able to get home and they’ll be trapped in the city with no way out,’ she said earlier on Friday. 

But Mr Warnes hit back with a clear message for Sydneysiders. 

‘If the fireworks are cancelled, that will be on the government completely,’ he said. 

NSW police commissioner Karen Webb said she would not hesitate in recommending to the state government that the fireworks be cancelled (pictured, fireworks in 2023)

RTBU president Craig Turner voiced his secretary’s sentiments when he emphatically said the cancellation would have ‘nothing to do with us’. 

Mr Warnes conceded that the RTBU would follow instructions from the Fair Work Commission if it ordered industrial action to stop. 

‘That is a matter for the state government and the Fair Work Commission,’ he said.  

‘We would prefer if there was no interruption at all.’

The state government plans to argue the industrial action could cause a risk to public safety on New Year’s Eve at a Fair Work Commission hearing on Christmas Eve.

But the action, limiting how far drivers can travel in a shift, would only delay trains and force some cancellations, the major train union said.

‘There will absolutely still be trains running on New Year’s Eve,’ Mr Warnes told ABC Radio.

Work bans forced scores of train delays and cancellations on Friday – many workers’ final day in the office for 2024 – while the South Coast line was shut completely. 

Ms Webb (pictured) said rail strikes had sparked safety concerns for the 250,000 people who rely on public transport to get in and out of Sydney’s CBD on New Year’s Eve

Transport Minister Jo Haylen poured scorn on the union’s portrayal that work bans were a means of getting the government back to the negotiating table.

‘They say, “well, let’s talk about it”,’ she told reporters.

‘But the fact is unless you agree with them, there’s no end point.’

New Year’s Eve is the busiest day on Australia’s largest rail network as millions of people are shuttled around Sydney Harbour and elsewhere in the city for the fireworks and other celebrations.

Some 3,200 services run about every five minutes ‘to get people in and out safely’, Ms Haylen said.

Unions continue to demand four annual wage increases of eight per cent, which Mr Minns has said is unaffordable and could not occur while he is denying nurses a similar claim.

The government previously offered 11 per cent across three years, including superannuation increases.

Rail workers were willing to settle for a middle ground, Mr Warnes said.

‘If the government wants to come to the table with an offer, they should make that offer and then we’ll take it to our members,’ he said.

‘If our members accept it, then the dispute is resolved.’

Outside of that, the Fair Work Commission can be asked to settle the dispute from February.