Page 2586 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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WAGES POLICY - GOVERNMENT SERVICE
Ministerial Statement
Debate resumed from 6 August 1991, on motion by Mr Berry:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR COLLAERY (12.01): Mr Speaker, I was interested in this timely statement from Mr Berry, the responsible Minister. It is good for the record to hear the Government put its policy approach forward. I realise that it is early days, and I am not going to go into detailed criticisms, point by point, of some of the issues, because I know how hard it is, when you go into government, to really get control of the public service, to get your reports in and to know exactly what is going on.
Mr Speaker, by way of introduction, it never ceases to amaze me how we in government could never find out how many people we actually and really employed. We were given various figures over a period - sometimes it was X and Y - and they related to whether they were permanent, part-time and casual. The figure went around the place and I think we all felt a bit frustrated.
One of the first and fundamental questions for any government is to find out how many people it employs. The yardstick is how many pays. The computer is geared to tell us only how many pays there are; we do not know how many people there are. I believe that that is still the case. I am not going to take any cheap points off Mr Berry and I am not going to ever ask him how many public servants there are in the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Kaine: Go on; I would like to know the answer.
MR COLLAERY: I am sure Mr Kaine still wants to know. We never found out and I am going to leave that one to Mr Kaine. He can press Mr Berry to see whether Mr Berry can get what we could never get. I wish him luck.
I have some more broad comments to make. Mr Berry is talking about the structural efficiency principles, productivity and other issues. He is acknowledging that for the foreseeable future a good part of our public service will be Australian public servants. That is a reality. Mr Berry's statement does not spell out whether we are looking for any special relationships through the Minister for Industrial Relations, Senator Peter Cook, given what is going to be a long-term relationship of we being the surrogate employers of Commonwealth public servants.
A couple of incidents during the Alliance Government, one whilst the Chief Minister was abroad, come to mind. I remember that the Commonwealth was making a submission in Melbourne on a wage issue where the ACT had a different opinion. The fact was that we were reasonably powerless.
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