Page 2588 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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I understand structural efficiency principles to be based on a recognition that you start with that equilibrium, that is, knowing what your productivity level is, and look for what more you can get within the wage confines or within an agreed shared enrichment arrangement where the workers get extra pay. But if you do not know, basically, what your productivity level is, how can you talk, as Mr Berry does, of recognisable gains in productivity in the Australian Public Service? That comment is made in Mr Berry's speech. I am being just somewhat cynical, and I would have been interested to hear more evidence of the Australian Public Service's claim to have markedly increased productivity in a number of areas.
Mr Speaker, I am not troubled by enterprise bargaining in the public service, but it does require another culture. I note, with agreement, that the ACT Government has problems with the Industrial Relations Commission's rejection of enterprise bargaining in its present stage in Australia. I guess, by inference, that the ACT Government is saying that it supports a level of enterprise bargaining. I believe that that is probably an inappropriate word within a public service concept, excluding our statutory bodies and our government business operations.
There is clearly a cultural change required from our 18,000 to 21,000 employees in returning to us a recognition that the belt tightening is all over the place. The adjustment of social advantage and disadvantage requires the public sector unions, particularly, to recognise that they compose about our greatest bill, our greatest recurrent expenditure. If there is to be more money shared out in the community in meeting community desired goals, we really need the public service unions themselves to accept, firstly, that we have a grossly enlarged public service for what we get in the Territory and, secondly, that those people who might be displaced by natural attrition or actual restructuring would find comparable roles, particularly in our community service areas and local private sector, without significant disadvantage, given the high levels of award and conditions that apply in the private sector these days.
Mr Speaker, there should have been more in Mr Berry's speech about where we are going to do this structural reform. I know that the Government announced some weeks ago that there will be a minor cut in the public service of 250 or so; but, clearly, the biggest issue facing the Territory at the moment is our wages bill and productivity. Whether we can do more with fewer public servants is a simplistic way of looking at it and can result in stress and overwork for sectors of our excellent public service.
There is a concept still in the public service that it is safer to be employed by the public sector; that a move to the private sector has too many attendant risks and the rest. That sort of hangover from the Depression needs to
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