Page 181 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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we are told by Mr Connolly - made so often and for so many years that no-one knew that it was a regular rort, a regular rip-off from Joe Average, the taxpayer. Ultimately, you and I, the taxpayers, pay.
If ACTION management cannot get their act together, the Government is criminal in its neglect, obviously. Where is the denial of these practices? Where are the assurances that they will not continue? Where are the assurances that there are not any more? That is what the people of the ACT want to know. I am sure the people of the ACT do not want to feather the nest of the ACTION workers, their TWU mates and the Labor Government itself; and the Liberal Party agrees.
We want reform of industrial relations. We do not want to lower wages or destroy working conditions; we just want reform of industrial relations. Let us get down to the basics; that means, in Canberra, with 8.8 per cent unemployment today, more jobs.
We want to wipe out the rorts, the corruption and the inefficiencies and the enormous tax burden to every taxpayer in the ACT who pays to keep the unions happily, greedily, rorting the system. It costs $64m per year to run ACTION buses, or $640 per household; more, of course, if you happen to use the buses because you have to pay fares as well, if they are collected. Tell me: How fair dinkum, true blue, considerate, intelligent, is a union that strikes on week days, as I said before, but orders its members to work on the weekends in order to collect penalty rates?
Let me tell you what the Liberal Party will do when we get into government in three years' time. We will introduce enterprise bargaining, now known euphemistically, by the way, on your side of the house, as workshop bargaining or workplace bargaining. Same thing; different name. The Federal ALP plan to introduce it as well.
We would introduce voluntary unionism. One wonders whether there was a vote taken before the first ACTION bus strike went ahead. I am told reliably that there was no vote taken. Perhaps the Minister would like to answer that question as well. We would also introduce recourse to civil action as an avenue to recover damages caused by industrial action. We would introduce minimum wages legislation and also essential services legislation. Perhaps the Minister would like to tell us whether he plans to ever introduce essential services legislation. We would also introduce a code of industrial practice to encourage conciliation and negotiation in disputes.
When we launched this policy last year, by the way, there were screams and howls from the Government and the unions, and in particular from the Andrews Sisters. On 30 January the assistant secretary of the Trades and Labour Council, Maureen Sheehan, said that the Liberal Party misunderstood industrial relations. She went on to say:
That's because, basically, industrial relations in the ACT is controlled by federal awards and the ACT Government has no power to legislate to override award conditions. There is simply no capacity for voluntary agreements which are inferior to awards.
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