Page 2663 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 October 1992
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Some 25 per cent of the private sector work force in Canberra has had to wait 27 months before it has gained the legislative support needed to confer on it the same rights enjoyed by the public sector under awards which incorporate the parental leave provisions. We as an Assembly must look more carefully at the mechanisms we use to implement such decisions as they are handed down and without undue delay. As I have said before on other occasions, it is important that, as a self-governing Territory, the ACT set an agenda for itself in the areas of enhancing community life that Canberrans regard as important. Mr Deputy Speaker, I commend the Bill to the Assembly.
MR STEVENSON (11.33): The media release put out by the ALP on this matter has the heading "Leave to be a right". It does not talk about the fact that it creates an obligation on all businesses, and this is usually the situation. We hear about rights; but very rarely do we hear about responsibilities or, in the case of business, the obligation. If business has an obligation to do these things, where did it come from?
One of the things I ask about this legislation is: Who called for it in Canberra? What problem is it trying to solve? Where was the consultation with employer groups? We have been contacted by many employers and employer groups, and they tell us, as unfortunately is usually the case, that they were not consulted. It seems that the ALP supports some unions, but not all unions. They will support employee unions, but ignore employer unions. So, it is not the principle of unionism, the principle of association, that is agreed with here. It is just the principle of the unions they happen to agree with, that are part of the ALP, that are an arm of the ALP. That is perfectly acceptable. I make no claim whatsoever that there are not useful activities achieved by unions, and I would never state that there were not some horrendous casualties caused by the actions of some unions. The point is that the ALP does not support unionism, because it largely ignores employer unions.
This type of legislation is the sort of impost on small business that has created the situation we have in the ACT and Australia at this time, where we have vast unemployment; where we have business after business closing down; where you can go in off the street and ask any business person in the ACT how he is doing, and the vast majority of them say, "Things are bad". Many of them are charging 1987-88 prices and working longer hours. I talked to a person in a fish shop yesterday. I said "How is it going?", and he said, "It is not good". They are now working longer hours for less money than they made previously.
How many more signs will we see saying "Closing Down Sale", as we saw yesterday from a well-known menswear company which is closing down in Belconnen? More and more. Yet some politicians, with their heads in the clouds, blissfully sail on, creating more unemployment and creating a business environment that prevents businesses from employing people, that forces people onto the dole, that forces them to feel bad about themselves because they do not have a job, that takes more and more money from the productive element in society to give handouts that result in fewer people having the money to expand their businesses and fewer businesses being able to employ people.
Let us look at some of the effects of this legislation. First of all, there is the injustice that is done to the person who has to be taken on part time. That person knows in no uncertain terms that the employer is obliged to fire him in a period of time. We do not know what that period of time may be; it could be up to a year. Is this the sort of activity that is going to encourage an employee to work
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