Page 2116 - Week 10 - Thursday, 26 October 1989
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MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I call on you for your protection. I sat and listened to Mr Kaine, and I must say that it was with a great deal of restraint that I sat there quietly and listened to the rubbish that he served up to us just a few moments ago. I seek your protection when he interjects in future.
Of course, Mr Kaine is right; the ALP's position was predictable in relation to this matter, because we care about workers' safety and we always have done. We made an issue of it in the election and I think that that was recognised by the electorate when it voted. But, of course, one of the issues that was dealt with in the election campaign was also the Liberal Party's approach to industrial relations. I clearly remember the approach taken by Mr Stefaniak on the issue of essential services legislation. He proposed to take us back into the nineteenth century, into the deep north. We were to have the sort of essential services legislation that Joh Bjelke-Petersen imposed on workers in Queensland, which, at that time, resulted in one of the highest levels of industrial disputation in Australia.
That was the sort of direction in which Mr Stefaniak and the Liberal Party were leading us. That is also the direction in which they would have us go in relation to occupational health and safety in the Australian Capital Territory. That is the direction in which they would lead us because they have not come out of the nineteenth century yet in regard to industrial relations. I must say I was rather surprised to hear Mr Stefaniak, in the light of all those previous positions of the Liberal Party, claiming to have some knowledge about industrial relations. On the basis of the sorts of admissions that he has made here today in relation to this matter, I can say for sure that Mr Stefaniak does not have such knowledge.
Mr Kaine, of course, suggested that the Labor Government was folding and buckling in the face of union pressure on the issue of occupational health and safety. Well, I have no difficulty at all with adopting a position of support for strong occupational health and safety legislation because in the last few years I can remember instances where unscrupulous businesses in the Territory forced workers to work in the most horrendous conditions, and the unions were not able to do anything about it because the workers were intimidated. I suggest that involved unions in the context of this legislation would be able to do something about it. Had we had this sort of legislation then, those workers would not have been in that situation.
But the Liberal Party, of course, would allow that to continue in perpetuity. I think it is high time that we exposed the Liberal Party for its union busting and anti-union tactics which it has taken on over the years. We should continue to expose it to the people of Canberra and demonstrate to the people of Canberra that the Liberal Party is prepared to see workers continuously injured
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