Page 1436 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
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practices, and that is a laudable aim. The Minister claims in the statement which we are now debating that the accord "will establish strong guidelines for a dramatic increase in the level of industrial harmony within the ACT Community and Health Service".
So it is clear that what the Government says about this accord is that it is designed both to improve levels of occupational health and safety within this area of the ACT and also to improve the situation of industrial restlessness which has unfortunately been the hallmark of that area for some time. The Minister is acknowledging by this statement that there is a very difficult problem to be faced here and that it is a major feature of our health system.
It is worth reminding ourselves of that industrial record. During the election campaign earlier this year the Liberals pointed out that a health dispute which was then in progress, in January of this year, was the ninety-fifth such dispute within a two-year period to occur in our health system. That is by any standard a quite appalling record. I note that there are recent figures published in the newspaper concerning the number of days lost through industrial disputes in this country and that the ACT fared very well under those figures. I think we had the lowest number of days lost per thousand head of population of anywhere in Australia. All I can say is that our record in the health area did not contribute to that very good figure, so we must have had excellent figures elsewhere to counteract the devastating effect of our health industrial unrest.
The dispute I was referring to in January this year occurred between the Community and Health Service and the Hospital Employees Federation over representation on occupational health and safety committees. The union there was pushing to have two representatives on the safety committees that were then being established and had refused to accept only the one place it was offered and claimed that this was a tokenistic offer. To back its move, the federation on this occasion imposed a number of bans. These affected the removal of rubbish from Woden Valley Hospital, linen collections from stores at Woden Valley, the delivery of non-urgent medical or domestic supplies to wards at Woden Valley, packing of laundry for delivery to Woden Valley or Chapman hostel, food service departments at both Royal Canberra and Woden Valley, hospital assistants making beds at Royal Canberra, X-ray porters moving patients between floors at Royal Canberra, wardsmen performing pre-operative shaves and transferring beds, and switchboard paging of people at both hospitals. This is just one of many dozens of disputes in the health system - some minor, some very major - over the last couple of years.
I believe, Mr Speaker, it is important to remind ourselves about this type of dispute because it is the type of
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