Page 145 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 17 February 1993
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There were some interjections about people attending golf days. If any employee is not conducting himself properly - taking unauthorised leave, that sort of thing - the matter gets dealt with in the ordinary course of events. That is what occurred in ACTION in relation to some of those allegations that were widely reported. This Government deals with public service - I should not say "improprieties", perhaps that is putting it too high. People who do not follow the rules are dealt with in the ordinary course of events.
Where we have problems with award payments or over-award payments, we are going through the process of simplifying the awards, consolidating the awards, and achieving change. The pace of change at the workplace in the ACT Government over the last couple of years has been unprecedented. When you people were in power you ranted and you raved but nothing happened, and the cost of running the administration was escalating.
Mr De Domenico: I was never in power, Mr Connolly.
MR CONNOLLY: Your leader was. This was shown nowhere more dramatically than within the bus system, where the costs just kept going up. Since we have been in office we have been effecting change at the workplace. We have been sitting around the table with the relevant unions and we have been achieving real change.
This has happened in the Department of Urban Services, in the asset management area, with the people who go out repairing public housing in the ACT, Mr Cornwell, and doing it very efficiently. Some years ago a carpenter would have gone out and done the woodwork. If there was a tile missing in the bathroom, he would have called back to the depot and a tiler would have gone out and repaired the tile. Now, in cooperation with the relevant building unions, through the building trades group, we have got reform and change out at the workplace in the asset management section, where we are multiskilling our trades employees and our non-trades assistants. We are effectively getting one worker with one basic trade, but with some additional skills, able to do a broader range of that sort of general household maintenance.
It is significant change, and change that is being achieved through cooperation with the trade union movement. That is the way you achieve efficiency, that is the way you achieve change, and that is the way you guarantee job security. We have a record of change and reform. The Liberal Party talks about micro-economic reform. We have a record of achieving that within the ACT Administration, which you people were unable to deliver when you were in office. You rant and you rave, but you are not prepared to sit down with the workplace managers, the workplace delegates and their unions, and negotiate the hard nitty-gritty of workplace change.
We have done it. You can see that in the ACTION subsidy figures, where for the first time, according to that chart that was published in the Advance Bank magazine, we have got over the hump. We are starting to achieve those savings targets, and I am confident that we will achieve that $10m real change in the subsidy level over the life of this Government. We are doing it through consultation. We are doing it through cooperation - not with the gun-at-the-head approach; not with the approach that says, "If you do not sign the contract you are out on your ear"; not coming in and in the dead of the night passing a Bill
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