Page 400 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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MR BERRY: If you are patient enough to sit down and listen, I am sure it will come through to you that this will be entirely relevant to the ACT. What has been said in Tasmania is relevant to the ACT in that the circumstances which are occurring in industry down there and which are the centre of a major industrial dispute are the same as what is proposed by Hewson and Howard for industrial relations as they will occur in the ACT.
Mr Kaine: What are you suggesting? What is your proposal?
MR BERRY: What I am going to say to you is that it is entirely relevant and the Labor Party stands opposed to those ham-fisted, clumsy arrangements. That is a Liberal person who is now in power, not somebody who is in opposition and who can crow about what they are going to do to the Labor movement and crow about what they are going to do to workers. They are going to walk in, call the police in, have workers arrested in their normal place of work, and accuse them of being trespassers. This is what the Liberals intend in the ACT when they are in opposition; but Groom has shown them that when you get into government it is a different matter.
Mr Humphries: It is a growing trend too.
MR BERRY: You can squeal about these matters in opposition - all care, no responsibility - like Mrs Carnell on health. Any story will do. A negative one will do as long as you can make a noise. You screech about it all you like. But when Groom gets into government, what does he say? He says, "Ham-fisted and clumsy", and he has got it right too.
Even Mr Groom would not allow people like Mr De Domenico over here to throw sick workers out on the street off workers compensation benefits. Mr De Domenico supports the view that workers should be terminated from workers compensation when the employer wants to. That is what he wants to do. He does not want to rehabilitate them. He is not interested in that. That is the sort of industrial relations which is being proposed by the Liberal Party; that is why it is relevant to consider Groom's statement in the context of the ACT. Hewson and Howard want to place workers in a weak position, to force them to negotiate - - -
Mr Humphries: I take a point of order. Madam Speaker, we have seen here a question about a Tasmanian Premier, and the Minister has drawn this matter out to talk about the Federal Opposition. None of it touches on the ACT. I would ask you to rule that the question is irrelevant and is out of order.
MADAM SPEAKER: I have already ruled that the question is relevant. Members are entitled to ask a Minister about anything relating to public affairs with which that Minister is connected. This Minister is connected with industrial relations and he is answering about his interpretation in relation to ACT industrial relations. I am ruling, and Mr Berry has the floor.
MR BERRY: This just goes to show you how dull the Liberals are when it comes to industrial relations. This just goes to show how dull they really are. They do not understand the application of the Federal industrial relations laws in the Australian Capital Territory. Of course, what Hewson and Groom are talking
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