Page 814 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 13 March 1991
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ground? I do not know. I cannot see what it is that could possibly be put forward reasonably and logically as a basis for attacking this Government's record in this area.
Like so much that has been put forward by the Opposition in recent months, it is contrived, it is deceptive, and it has the effect of only creating in the minds of people in the ACT confusion and fear about what is really going on. Unfortunately, when any community faces the sorts of changes, the large, in some cases quite traumatic changes, that have occurred in some parts of our public sector in the ACT, it is quite understandable that there will be that kind of confusion and fear about what is going on. But I believe that we have managed that very well and the industrial record, Mr Speaker, more than amply proves that.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (10.55): I think, Mr Speaker, that that demonstrates quite adequately how little interest the Labor Opposition really does have in this subject. It is like the motion against one of our Ministers yesterday. The Leader of the Opposition did not even support Mr Berry after he had moved the censure motion. I heard Mr Collaery suggest recently that they do not even travel in the lift together. They obviously do not even talk together about making any sort of attack on the Government either. They think that by one member getting up and making a few ideological remarks that establishes the case.
I know that it makes good reading for Mr Berry to chop that bit out of Hansard and mail it off to all his mates; but perhaps he ought to mail off the rest of the debate as well, so that they can see how weak and ineffective the whole argument from the Opposition is. If they had any conviction about this, they would all be on their feet yapping; but Mr Berry is it, and, certainly, Mr Berry would be the weakest of the members on the opposite side of the house when it comes to making any sort of a case.
Mr Speaker, the very wording of his motion simply underlines the absolute refusal - or the inability, I do not know which; I have talked about intellectual laziness, and perhaps it is the latter - of the Opposition to recognise or even to appreciate the nature of the Alliance Government's approach to industrial relations management in the ACT.
As has already been explained by Mr Humphries, we have excellent relationships with the trade unions. That is because we have worked at it. But, of course, the Opposition does not want to hear that. They would love to see the trade unions in a state of turmoil, contesting everything that we do and making life difficult for us. It simply is not like that. Right from the beginning our approach has been to take a course that gives emphasis to effective employee relations as the necessary precondition to sound industrial relations management in the Territory. Mr Berry would not even begin to understand that. If it is not confrontationist, it obviously is not any good for Mr Berry, and, of course, his argument does not stand up.
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