Page 822 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 13 March 1991
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MR BERRY (11.19), in reply: Mr Speaker, what we have to clarify in this place is that much of the industrial relations in the Territory - and that is industrial relations for either conservative governments like the Kaine Government or the next progressive government provided by the Labor Party - will be affected by the Commonwealth's approach to wages and conditions through the Industrial Relations Commission. Of course, in the period of the conservative Government opposite, the accord between the trade unions and the Government nationally has set the pace in the ACT on industrial relations.
The latest round of negotiations under the structural efficiency principle are, of course, pacesetters as well. What I am concerned about is the Government's approach outside of those principles, and the first one that I raised was the confrontation between the Minister for Health and the nurses over their working conditions. It needs to be placed on the record that this Minister took on these nurses outside the structural efficiency principle and attempted to set his own agenda. He fell in a hole, and it demonstrated the incompetence of this Minister and the Government as a whole to deal with industrial relations issues in the national context.
Justice Cohen asked why the Government was attacking the conditions of the nurses when massive savings could be made under the structural efficiency principle without industrial action. Of course, it took a little while; but the Government eventually woke up and back it went to where it should have been in the first place, namely, the structural efficiency principle negotiations, which everyone knew would be the end result - except the Minister. All he wanted to do was to take on the nurses.
The Minister makes much out of lost days. Industrial relations cannot be measured only in lost days. It is true to say that conflict is a part of industrial relations. The measure of good industrial relations is how one can avoid conflict at all levels, but a true measure of industrial relations has to take into account the social wage and the social justice elements of the social wage. How many unions have come and congratulated this Government on the loss of jobs in the ACT? How many unions have congratulated the Government? How many unions are marching in support of this Government, hoping for their re-election next time? How many unions are congratulating the Government for the cuts in services to their members? How many unions are congratulating the Government for the closure of schools? I say, none, Mr Speaker. None of the unions are congratulating this Government for what it has done to the social wage of Territorians, because the Government has attacked the social wage.
Mr Humphries: How?
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