Page 143 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 17 February 1993
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do not like the salary you are offered you have no option. It is either out the door or take the reduction in wages. Of course, they deny reductions in wages. They say, "We are not out to attack people's wages". Yesterday Mr Westende said that we should be getting rid of all penalties and overtime in relation to ACT government employment.
Mr Westende: I did not say "penalties".
MR CONNOLLY: They want to get rid of all overtime. They deny that they want to reduce people's wages. Again we had Jeff Kennett before the Victorian election saying, "Trust me. No worker will be one dollar worse off". Was it two weeks after the election or was it a week after the election or was it on the Monday that he said, in effect, "In comes the silver service for Parliament House and, by the way, Victorian workers, forget that nonsense I told you about nobody losing a dollar on their wages. That was just me seeking your vote. What I am really going to do is knock off your holiday pay, knock off leave loadings". These principles were not in issue during the election campaign because he had given solemn assurances that he was not after people's terms and conditions.
This is Liberal Party industrial relations ideology: "Give people lots of platitudes before an election that we are not out to undermine their wages and conditions; give people assurances that they will not be one dollar worse off, everything will be fine. Try to get into government, and then knock off the award system, do away with awards and have individual contracts". That is your Liberal Party rhetoric. We saw in Victoria an even more sinister process. At 3 o'clock in the morning whack through legislation to do away with holiday pay, leave loadings, and these sorts of principles. No doubt this inquiry the Liberal Party would like us to have into terms and conditions in ACT industrial employment would be a prelude, if they ever found themselves in office here, to the process of offering all these workers their individual contracts, where again they can take it or leave it.
Our employment practices in the ACT are obviously open and accountable. We come to the Estimates Committee and we are accountable in this parliament. I cannot recall answering any questions, either in the chamber or on notice, seeking details of the extent to which we make overtime or penalty or over-award payments. Certainly, if asked, we will make that information available in relation to any agency. In most cases, of course, these payments are authorised by awards. The controversy, if you like, that Mr De Domenico was referring to in relation to the Electricity and Water Authority was a process where, because of a multitude of workers working under different awards and each award having a different and quite complex set of provisions on what is allowable to claim as an award allowance and what is not, you had some confusion. We had a situation where some workers were getting allowances which were not covered in their awards. We sorted that out, and those payments that were not authorised have been stopped.
We have now negotiated with the relevant unions - and there is a range of them - a process of broadbanding in those over-award allowances. Actually, they are not over-award allowances; they are allowances in the award. My terminology in this area is perhaps not as precise as Mr Lamont's will be. Those allowances that go beyond the basic award pay have now been broadbanded. We have a simpler and more straightforward system, achieving the sort of change that Labor has
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