Page 2845 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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Let us look at the economic assumptions on which this is all based - equal bargaining power; equal knowledge between employer and employee, with no independent arbitrator. It is fanciful rubbish designed to promote this economic efficiency. What Trevor Kaine focuses on is profits only. He is not concerned about workers being in a position to protect their industrial rights. He wants to throw that out the window. He does not want workers to be in - - -
Mr Humphries: Profits create jobs.
MR BERRY: The Liberals' position is not very different from that of Mr Stevenson when it comes to people who are oppressed. Mr Stevenson argues that people who are oppressed ought to be able to defend themselves - leave them alone; do not interfere; let them either sink or swim. That is what Mr Stevenson argues, and these people argue the same line in industrial relations terms - sink or swim; let the strong survive and the weak go under. The real result for us is that we will end up with an average lower wage, and that is what it is all about, because the strong will survive but the weak will be pushed down. Average incomes will be forced down and living standards, particularly for those weaker sections of the industrial movement, will fall.
The ACT Government is strongly committed to an organised industrial movement that is able to protect itself and to defend its workers. It is also committed to an organised industrial movement which is prepared to participate in the sorts of programs which deliver workplace safety and opportunities which should never be passed up. I had the great pleasure the other day to announce the winner of the occupational health and safety award in the Australian Capital Territory. I must say that it was something that in my earlier working days I never thought I would see occur - where bosses were involved with the trade union movement in working together to provide occupational health and safety for their workers in a regulated environment. The only way they were ever going to do it was in a regulated environment. It needed the commitment of unions and bosses, and a government committed to pulling them together, to bring about that result.
Madam Speaker, we have seen develop in the ACT in the short period of self-government, despite the Alliance Government, a process of consultation and power sharing within the industrial workplace which has brought nothing but positives to the Australian Capital Territory. It will continue to bring positives while ever we leave behind those silly ideas about confrontation, about the Liberal philosophy of keeping workers in their place and describing it as one of equality. It certainly is not when it comes to the issue of power.
Mr De Domenico: Their place is in a job, not on a dole queue.
MR BERRY: By the sound of it, by forcing the kiddies back into the mines. That is what the Liberals are on about; they have made it clear - disempower the workers and take away their organisational ability in order that they cannot protect their wages and working conditions. In that way industrial wages and working conditions will decline, and so too will the standard of living for those working people. All that it is being pursued for, it is claimed, is to increase jobs.
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