Page 186 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
which you failed to achieve. We have more buses on the road; you failed to achieve that. We are reducing expenditure. We are going to introduce the revised ACTION network as of 6 July.
Mr De Domenico: At what cost? What deals have you done?
MR CONNOLLY: That has been endorsed at a saving, Mr De Domenico. You see, they are constantly obsessive about doing deals. That may have been the way they did things; that may have been the way they ran public affairs.
When we had a problem within the system, when we had a disagreement with the union - we had industrial action; we had three days on which the network was closed down because drivers withdrew their labour; we had another day on which there were bans on the collection of revenue - what did we do? We got the matter into the commission. What was the result? We got an agreement that everybody go back and work; we got all the bans lifted; we got an agreement to get the network running by 6 July, which was our timetable. We have an acknowledgment that reform has to occur within the context of the ACT budget, which means an acknowledgment that we have to continue down the reform process, and we have management and union talking again.
That, Madam Speaker, is sensible industrial relations. These people savour the rhetoric, the hairy-chested approach of "Let's get stuck into the unions; let's kick a few heads". Do not worry if it causes chaos; do not worry if it achieves nothing. It sounds good in rhetoric. We have runs on the board in this area and we are producing real results.
An interesting parallel with this is the processing of redundancies within the ACT public service where, as a result of the budget decision, we were committed to 250 positions. Within my portfolio, Urban Services, 120 were identified and either they are all gone or they have been identified and are about to go out the door. You people, during the period when that was first being announced, were desperate to get everybody sacked tomorrow. You were going to go in and wield the axe and get everybody sacked. Apart from the fact that that would have been unlawful and inconsistent with award and statutory provisions, it would have caused industrial chaos.
What Labor did was negotiate with the unions. We talked with the unions, both at the TLC peak level and at the workshop delegate level, and we have achieved that significant reduction in the level of the ACT public sector without a single industrial dispute, without a day being lost within the whole APS through industrial disputation. That shows, Madam Speaker, what a Labor government can do to achieve reform and efficiency, by a sensible process of respecting the rights of workers, respecting the unions and talking with them and achieving real reform, instead of this empty, hollow rhetoric that we hear from the Liberals.
Madam Speaker, the runs are on the board as far as the ACT Labor Government's ability to achieve efficiencies in ACTION is concerned. Sadly, this document shows that the Alliance Government, when it was in power, was totally unable to come to grips with the running of this important, indeed vital, public service, the transport service. What this report shows is that in the period after the first Labor Government, when you lot had the reins of power, you completely stuffed it. You were out of control. On all indicators, you were pointing in the wrong
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .