Page 5127 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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MR STEFANIAK (5.53): I wholeheartedly endorse the comments made by my brother and colleague Mr Humphries. I will deal with just a couple of points that were bandied about concerning trade unions. I am certainly not anti-trade union. I have only ever once refused to join a trade union. That was the BLF, when I was a labourer when I was about 18 - and that was because I was virtually going to be forced to. I left the building site rather than put my employer, who was backing me, into a situation where he would be blackballed.
Apart from that, I have joined a couple of trade unions. I was a shop steward with AGLA, a body of which Mr Connolly, in fact, was the president for a period of time. I had no problem whatsoever in joining that voluntary body. Not all government lawyers were members of AGLA. In fact, it was a fairly small proportion, really. I think it was about 50 per cent, but it was growing. Certainly, a significant number of people there were not members. I signed up a couple of members, actually, in the 12 months or so that I was a shop steward at the local office of the DPP in 1988. I had no problem in joining that union. I thought it was an organisation that should be supported. I was interested to hear even Mr Stevenson's comments in relation to why he chose to join the New South Wales police association.
There is very much a place for unions. The Australian worker would not enjoy the same conditions that he or she enjoys now were it not for stands taken by trade unions, especially around the turn of the century but also beforehand in the 1890s and later in the 1930s. There is a very strong argument, however, that perhaps the pendulum has swung a bit too far in a number of instances, and trade unions, like any other organisations - organisations of employers, too - have to move with the times. Times have changed. But one cannot take away the great benefit that trade unions have given to the Australian worker and to Australian society as a whole. I certainly do not mind putting that on the record, because that is a simple fact of history.
However, we are talking about a discrimination Bill, and I do not think it would be complete without this particular amendment. I have looked carefully at Mr Berry's Act. Certainly subsection 122(1) enables some discrimination, some favour to be given, to a member of a trade union. There are indeed exemptions. A person can be effectively deemed, to use Mr Berry's word, to be a quasi-member of a union if he or she gets a certificate on conscientious grounds that he or she does not want to be a member of a union or, indeed, an employer body. That is under, I think, section 267 of the Industrial Relations Act. So, even within that Act there are exemptions.
I would remind members that not everyone in the ACT is under a Federal award. Section 37 of the self-government Act empowers the Assembly and the Executive to do a number of things; to make laws in relation to a number of areas. They are covered in schedule 4 on pages 27 and 28 of the
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