Page 2592 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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certain areas of the public service. That should not be all that difficult to assess. It is quite crucial that the Government does assess that.
I am interested in page 3 of Mr Berry's speech. In the second paragraph he states:
As regards the ACT Government's business enterprises, the Government would expect that separate workplace agreements would be developed that would reflect their commercial identities and maximise the opportunities to improve their effectiveness and competitiveness.
I suppose that harks back to enterprise bargaining, and that is fine; but the Government, I think, has not started off on a terribly good footing there when it put on hold, and probably on terminal hold, the corporatisation of ACTEW and the Mitchell health facility.
The Alliance Government was looking to bringing into the Territory's coffers approximately, so the former Chief Minister told me, $12m this financial year, with greater improvement in the following financial year, from the corporatisation of ACTEW. I cannot really see how Mr Berry and his Government expect to bring any money into the Territory. In fact, not corporatising ACTEW, I think, will cost the Territory money. So, I think the corporatisation program of ACTEW and the Mitchell health facility is an appropriate one that would reflect those enterprises' commercial identities and maximise the opportunities to improve their effectiveness and competitiveness. Putting that on hold, I think, is a very retrograde step and belies the Government's own rhetoric - what it states it intends to do.
Generally though, Mr Speaker, I think Mr Berry's statement is a moderate statement. It displays perhaps a surprising degree of commonsense for a Labor government; but there are certain areas where I will be interested to see whether the Government can match its rhetoric. Somehow I very much doubt it.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (12.22): Mr Speaker, I just want to speak briefly on the subject. Of course, it is a good thing that the Government makes a statement about its wages policy as long as they do not believe that making a statement about wages policy is all there is to their relationship with their employees. Wages, of course, are only one element in the terms and conditions of service of our employees, and in many cases not even the most important one. As has been alluded to earlier, a lot of public servants work long hours, and the work that they do has no relationship to the money that they are paid because they do the job that they like doing and they are doing it in the public interest. There is a certain avocation in that. It is not just a job, so the wages are not necessarily the major aspect at all.
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