Page 5132 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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I will continue to assert and to insist that, if a labourer cannot get employment because he does not belong to a trade union, that is unfair and unreasonable discrimination, no matter how you dress it up. If trade unions can assert, as they do in some occupations, that you can work in this trade only if you belong to this trade union, it gives the trade unions a prerogative and a right that they should not possess, any more than any other organisation should possess it. So, I am just as much against discrimination on the basis of whether one is or is not a member of a trade union as I am against discrimination because one is a woman, or discrimination because one has a different colour or a different religion or comes from a different ethnic group from the one that I come from.
I do not accept Mr Berry's argument that because it is embedded in a Federal Act it is "okay", to use Mr Stevenson's phrase. It is not okay. So I, as a member of this Assembly - the fact that I happen to be a Liberal notwithstanding - will argue against discrimination in any form. I think that this Bill that is before the house is a good Bill, because it attempts to do away with and legislate against discrimination in any form.
I have already mentioned discrimination on the basis of age. I understand why that is not in the Bill. It is because it is too difficult, at this stage, to codify the forms of age discrimination, and until you can codify it you cannot put it into a Bill or an Act. But it is very simple to remove discrimination on the basis of membership of an organisation, whether it be a trade union or any other form of organisation. It is just a matter of writing it in, as Mr Stefaniak proposes to do.
I cannot see how anybody can argue that to simply take in another form of discrimination and legislate against it - just as we are legislating against discrimination on the basis of sex, sexuality, marital status, pregnancy, race, religion and so on - is a bad thing. I cannot see the basis on which Mr Berry can argue that discrimination on the basis of membership of a trade union is okay when he says - - -
Mr Berry: It will not work.
MR KAINE: I just told you that the fact that a socialist government embedded it in a Federal Act does not make it right.
Mr Connolly: No, no - Alfred Deakin.
MR KAINE: That Act was not written by Alfred Deakin.
Mr Connolly: No, the predecessor Act.
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