Page 2852 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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Do not take my word for it; look at the figures published in the recent Advance Bank study on transport in Canberra. We see that the ACTION subsidy was just escalating in the period of your stewardship. This Labor Government has gone in, is achieving reform in the workplace, and is achieving real savings for the ratepayers, and we will continue to do that.
Let us look at the Electricity and Water Authority. Again there was great agitation. What did the Government do? We came across situations where there were payments which our auditors told us were inappropriate. Those payments were stopped. We had a meeting with the unions. We said to the unions, "Of course, you can dispute this in the commission". That has happened. The matter is proceeding in the commission. Not an hour of time on the job has been lost as a result of that difference of opinion. I have given an undertaking that we will abide by the decision of the commission, and so have the unions. The matter is being resolved. Certainly, there is a bit of heat and conflict from time to time in industrial relations between this Government and some of its unions. That will always be the case; but we play the game through the Industrial Relations Commission and we play the game through consultation.
What sort of results are we achieving? Madam Speaker, a document that I have cited before - the performance indicators for the electricity supply industry - shows a picture within ACTEW of steadily increasing labour productivity. We are well above the national average in terms of gigawatt hours sold per employee, at 2.7, as opposed to a national average of 2.2. We moved from 2.3 in 1988 to 2.7 in the 1991 financial year. So, there is consistent improvement in productivity in the workplace within ACT public authorities.
Mr De Domenico: But you are only a monopoly wholesaler. You do not generate it; you sell it.
MR CONNOLLY: Within ACTEW we are achieving productivity increases. That is the point, Mr De Domenico. The Liberal approach is that the only way to achieve savings, which we need to achieve, the only way to allow business to be more efficient, is to slash workers' wages. That is the simplistic approach of members opposite. We take the approach that you can achieve those efficiencies and savings by better productivity in the work force. Your workers are working more effectively, earning probably better pay and enjoying better conditions, through everyone achieving more. We say that you can increase the size of the cake. You say that you have to cut down on the slice enjoyed by workers. Madam Speaker, that is not an approach that the Australian people will endorse. Within ACTEW in the last 18 months or so we have reduced the number of unions in that workplace from 19 to 13. We are establishing workplace groups with a view to being able to move into industrial enterprise bargaining within the context of the established industrial relations system, as Senator Cook is encouraging across Australia.
Within Urban Services we have an enormously low level of industrial disputation. Consultative groups are being established across the board in order to achieve workplace reforms and greater productivity. Within the Building Assets Management Group we have some unionists off-line, engaged in full-time consultative work and workplace reform duties to achieve a more productive work force. All of that is being done within the context of the established industrial relations system. Madam Speaker, our system is delivering the results. The Opposition's system will deliver chaos.
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