Page 5808 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
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that there are other aspects of the agreement the Chief Minister has reached with the trade union movement which affect the way in which the corporatisation of ACTEW will be affected. That is in the presentation speech, so I assume that it is true. I think the question that needs to be asked is this: What are those arrangements? Can we, the mere elected members of the ACT Assembly, elected by the people of the Territory, be graced with the information about that? What are these arrangements that have been entered into with the trade union movement?
If they are not sinister, if I am making a mountain out of a molehill, I am sure the Chief Minister will be very happy to table details of those arrangements. Certainly, Mr Deputy Speaker, that will have a great deal of bearing on the way in which future corporatisations might proceed. What sort of precedent are we setting in this case?
I welcome and I note the comment by the Minister also that newly corporatised activities "must have the freedom to negotiate employment arrangements for new staff, as far as practicable, within the same statutory framework as other companies". That is a very positive step.
There is, of course, the problem alluded to by the Leader of the Opposition with respect to those people who were public servants under the Public Service Act prior to becoming servants of Totalcare Industries, in that those people will enjoy the same conditions that the public servants in equivalent position would enjoy, just as if they had stayed members of the public service. If that comment I quoted earlier is true, there are going to be two classes of employees in Totalcare Industries at some point in the future. Employees who come after 1 January 1992 will come to employment arrangements which are different from those which apply to public servants who are employed under the Public Service Act of 1922.
That, I think, is probably unavoidable. It is probably not possible to say to public servants who take on posts in Totalcare Industries that they must give up the rights and entitlements that they would have enjoyed as members of the public service. Nonetheless, I think it is important for the Government, as quickly as possible, to put Totalcare Industries on a similar commercial basis to other enterprises operating in the ACT and elsewhere to provide services of this kind. It does mean that they get down to the business of negotiating with their work forces, either through their unions or through a process of enterprise bargaining, to work out what is going to be the best arrangements for the workers in that particular workplace.
I note also in the Minister's presentation speech that ministerial shareholders - I take it that that refers to the Chief Minister and Mr Connolly at the present time - will request voluntary compliance with government EEO policies for other groups. That is in conjunction with the decision in proposed new section 33B not to apply the Commonwealth's affirmative action Act necessarily to the
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