Page 192 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.15): I was disappointed in the last speaker. He said that he was going to introduce some rationality and get back to the issues, and he did not; he continued the same ranting and raving as the others on the other side of the house. I would like to bring us back to what this matter of public importance is about - unnecessary industrial disputation and additional cost to the community. Those two facts are indisputable.
Anybody who tried to drive his car around Canberra on the last two or three days found the roads absolutely clogged with private motor vehicles. In Adelaide Avenue, even with the bus lane available, there were three lanes of traffic clogged along Adelaide Avenue. Just calculate the cost of that to the community. Just calculate the cost while the buses were off the streets and Mr Lamont and his mates were having a little argument before the Industrial Relations Commission which need never have taken place. It was unnecessary. People were going off half-cocked, without understanding each other. They should have spoken to each other about it beforehand and sorted out the issues. They would not have had to go to the IRC.
Not only was there an actual cost to people over the last two to three days from using their motor vehicles when they could have travelled more cheaply in the bus; but the IRC has now imposed permanently on the taxpayers of this community the additional cost that came out of the very issues that were in dispute. The illegal payments are now legal ones. They are embedded permanently in there. This rort whereby drivers of articulated buses who drive them for only three days a week are paid for the full week - they are paid for work they do not do - is now permanently embedded into their conditions of service. So, it not only cost us an additional cost this week but also has now cost the taxpayers of the ACT who pay this enormous subsidy to transport a permanent ongoing cost every year.
The facts of this matter of public importance are absolutely indisputable. Mr Lamont and others can rant and rave, but you cannot get away from the basic facts. He said that we pulled it out of the drawer from last August. Of course we did, because that was eight months ago and your Government has done absolutely nothing since.
You talk about these things coming up during my stewardship. Who was chairman of the Public Accounts Committee when that Auditor-General's report was tabled? There she is; our present Chief Minister. What did she do about it? Absolutely nothing. She took the Government in June and this is now April 1992. What has she done in the meantime? Two months after that report was tabled she became Chief Minister and Treasurer and she has done nothing since. So, let us put the blame where it belongs. Let us be rational about this.
Mr Lamont talked about talking to the unions. During the stewardship of my Government we did just that, and Mr Lamont was one of the many trade union secretaries who came into my office and had discussions with me on a whole range of subjects, and we headed off the disputes.
Mr Lamont: Only because we could not get any sense out of your Ministers who were responsible, and we did not get much out of you.
Mr Cornwell: We checked the silver after you left, too, incidentally.
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