Page 2763 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 14 August 1990
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particular, unions in the building industry are seen as an easy can to kick when a conservative government is in trouble. We have seen that rhetoric in New South Wales with the royal commission into the building unions, and we have seen the conservative Government, in this Territory, trying to climb on that band wagon and have a go at the building industry unions. In this matter, it is the building industry unions and the Australian Federation of Construction Contractors who are standing firmly together to argue that the Government has some responsibility for this collapse and a responsibility to assist the subcontractors.
It is very easy to mouth the rhetoric of being a government concerned with private enterprise. It is very easy to mouth the rhetoric that it is only the Liberals and Conservatives that understand small business and that the Labor Party in some way has no feeling for small business - that it in some way is a tool of the union movement. These are allegations we often hear. But, when push comes to shove, when small business is in trouble, when a building group collapses and leaves contractors with unpaid moneys, where is the rhetoric of the conservative governments and their assistance for small business? Small business in Canberra is bleeding over this matter. Contractors face the certain collapse of their businesses and all this Government will do is wash its hands of the affair. In one particularly unfortunate case that we are aware of, not only is the subcontractor himself facing bankruptcy but his mother, whose house is mortgaged to support her son's business, faces losing that house.
Mr Acting Speaker, these are the circumstances where government rhetoric about support for the business community will really be tested and I sincerely hope that it will not be tested and found wanting. It will give this Opposition and the trade union movement no pleasure to make political points out of this exercise. People are hurting over this matter and it is up to the Government to come to the party.
Mr Acting Speaker, I referred earlier to the fact that unions and industry are quite united on this issue, despite the nonsense of union bashing allegations that we hear in the calls for a royal commission into the building industry unions. If a royal commission is called for, it is not needed to look into the building industry unions; it is needed to look into contract management and the way small people can lose all through incompetent government decisions.
On 4 August the Canberra Times reported, under the by-line of Mr Uhlmann, that the ACT Government may have to pick up some of the $7m debt left by the collapse of Shelleys because unions and contractors are refusing to continue work on the sites abandoned by Shelleys following their collapse. Any Canberra commuter who travels on Limestone Avenue is well aware of this. Unfortunately, despite the
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