Page 208 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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MR BERRY: 1990.
Mr Duby: Thank you. This is now February 1991.
MR BERRY: He has worked it out; I am glad. It is a year of mishandling of industrial issues. There is more to come. There was more action on 25 January; on 27 January - and we will talk about the chief architect of the Hunt dispute over there, who is chuckling - Sunday, 28 January; Monday, 29 January, a stop-work meeting.
Mr Duby: 1990?
MR BERRY: 1990. Also, on 30 January 1990; 31 January 1990 and so on, right up to February 1990. What happened? After all that, it went to the Arbitration Commission, and guess what? Justice Cohen of the Industrial Relations Commission was critical of this Government - and that was placed on the record - because it was this Government that attacked the nurses' conditions. It was Minister Humphries who said that he would take their conditions off them. It was the Industrial Relations Commission which criticised the present Government for the way that it handled the industrial dispute. Justice Cohen asked why the Government was attacking the 10-hour night shift when massive savings could be made under the structural efficiency principle without industrial action.
What was the outcome? After all this - without negotiating with the nurses; having rushed in headlong and taken them on - the consultants scrutinised and endorsed the 10-hour shift. The nurses are still working it. The whole hospital system was disrupted while the Minister for Health took on the trade union movement. What a joke. He got done like a dinner, and he deserved to get done like a dinner.
We then had the Priorities Review Board. The Government's real agenda was revealed in the report of the Priorities Review Board, which was to sell off the ACT's assets and force people out of jobs. There is no question about this. Thousands of people rallied against the Government.
Mr Collaery: Yes, atrocities. That is your word. I was just reminding you.
MR BERRY: Mr Collaery admits that atrocities were being committed in the industrial field. That is why they were concerned about the way the Government was handling issues. It looked as though the Government was backing away from the implementation of the report, but time will tell. I think it will tell us that they have been working behind the scenes to implement sections of that report. Thankfully, they will not have enough time to implement all of it, and some of it will be reversible.
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