Page 2587 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The issue concerned equal opportunity, from memory. It concerned an attempt by the Commonwealth not to pay an equal wage to librarians and some people employed in the social welfare area. Senator Peter Cook's area of government took the view that there should not be equal opportunity, the reason being that the study and university work required for engineers - I am sure Mr Kaine is listening carefully - was far more demanding and produced a product that should be paid more than the product of the diploma of librarianship and the degrees that went with it.
The case concerned a small number of employees in the Australian Public Service - maybe a few thousand - with only a handful affected in the Territory. But the principle was wrong. The principle seemed wrong to me. Given the fact that the Chief Minister was out of the Territory, I was able to ask that our industrial relations people take a different point of view. But really, we did not have a lot of say because they were Australian public servants, not Territory public servants.
I would be interested in due course to hear from Mr Berry, given that Senator Peter Cook is a Labor colleague, whether we are going to get any special relationship. Firstly, are we going to have rights of intervention down at the commission and can we work out proper intervener arrangements? Is there going to be adequate consultation with the Territory on all the award restructuring and other issues that affect essentially our payroll and the rights and conditions of Australian public servants employed by the last government off the ranks, the more recently enlightened government in the country, hopefully?
Mr Berry went on to speak about productivity. That may be all very well in a factory, in a workplace of that nature; but how do we measure productivity in the public service? In the classical sense - I have been doing a little bit of research - productivity at company level is defined as the output per unit of input. Labour productivity, usually - I think there is unanimity in the country on that - is output per employee in a given time period. I do not know what given time periods there are in the public service for doing anything.
Mr Kaine: Infinity.
MR COLLAERY: Infinity, Mr Kaine says. Certainly, some work at different paces and there are different time regimes. If you are in a government engineering workshop, clearly you have to get something back on the road. If you are in the fire service you have to attend a fire - usually you do - and there is a measurable concept of performance. But in the white collar areas, how do you measure output and input and get some sort of common concept? Some people say that the equilibrium of a wage rate is what you pay to get some marginal productivity from your labour, from your staff in an office, related to what you, yourself, can earn.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .