Page 2853 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES (4.03): Madam Speaker, frankly, I find that the views expressed by those opposite, the Minister for Industrial Relations and his colleague Mr Connolly - - -
Mr De Domenico: He has gone.
MR HUMPHRIES: He has gone, I notice. He could not stay in the room. They really do belong to a bygone era. In this, Madam Speaker, they really are the conservatives of Australian politics. They are the ones who do not understand that time has marched on and it is time for us to develop a new approach to the serious economic problems our country is facing, no less in this Territory than elsewhere. Look at the words that have been used, particularly by Mr Berry, in the course of this debate; words like the workers and the bosses; phrases like cut and slash, scorched earth, return to the Dark Ages, policies of the Sun King, nineteenth century mine disasters. Then we had Mr Connolly calling on the authority of Alfred Deakin, a Prime Minister of 90 years ago. This is the classic "proletariat versus the capitalist" kind of language we are hearing from this Government, and it is not applicable any more.
We have a sophisticated work force in this country. We have people who are highly educated and intelligent and who are capable of making decisions for themselves and negotiating with their employers in a way which the present rigid, inflexible industrial relations system does not allow them to do. Frankly, Madam Speaker, it is insulting to tens of thousands of workers in our community at this time that they are told, "We cannot trust you to make deals with your bosses, to negotiate directly with your bosses, about your wages or your conditions or your hours of work or whatever it might be. We do not trust you to do that".
Mr Kaine: Good old Uncle Wayne is going to take care of you.
MR HUMPHRIES: "Uncle Wayne is going to take care of you. He is going to fix you up. We will put you in a nice little straitjacket, and that is the end of your responsibility in this matter". Madam Speaker, that view is rooted in the past. It sees unions as an essential player in the industrial scene, irrespective of how accurate that point of view really is. It treats workers as being too slow or too stupid to be able to advance their own cases in proper fora. It says that unions need to be entrenched in the industrial relations system and given privileges and powers as part of that system and made a principal in negotiations under that system, not just an advocate for a principal in those negotiations. In other words, they are a factor in industrial relations, not just something that supports one side or the other in those negotiations.
That attitude, Madam Speaker, lies at the very heart of our present economic problems in Australia. It is an attitude which says that the present apparatus of wage protection and protection of conditions that workers enjoy is actually more important than the wages protection itself or the protection of conditions itself. The way you have set up your mechanism to stop changes from taking place is so important that you cannot permit that system to be tampered with, even though that system is demonstrably working against the interest of thousands of workers all over this country.
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