Page 655 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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Mr Berry, in his usual way, also suggested that every person who voted Liberal or who, in any way, shape or form, has ever supported the Liberal Party believes in the non-protection of workers. For heaven's sake, Madam Speaker, we are in 1993. Mr Westende will, perhaps more eloquently than I ever can, inform Mr Berry of the fact that right here in the ACT most, if not all, employers realise that the best asset that they have today, tomorrow and whenever is their work force. Mr Westende has great experience in this. He will tell you what has been going on in his particular workplace over the past week or so. He will show that Mr Berry, who has never employed anybody in his life, in fact, knows nothing about business. So much for Mr Berry.
Mr Berry, for example, also mentioned the Workers' Compensation Act. As far back as 1983, 10 years ago - Mr Lamont is waving furiously, because Mr Lamont and I, once again, sat on that committee in 1983 - there was unanimous agreement to 39 changes to the current Workers' Compensation Act. Do you think we have those 39 changes in place yet? The answer is no. Mr Berry is the Minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Act. Not anywhere in this priority list do I see anything about a termination clause, for example, in the Workers' Compensation Act. This was unanimously agreed to by the trade union movement - the workers of the ACT, in other words - the employers, the government at the time, and by everybody. They unanimously agreed to a termination clause. It is now 10 years down the track, and we still have not seen it. In fact, we did see it just prior to the end of the First Assembly. Guess which political party did not support it? The Labor Party did not support it. So for Mr Berry to come into this place and say that he has done all these marvellous things about the Workers' Compensation Act is a nonsense. Minister, you have done nothing.
Let us get onto perhaps what the priorities statement should have said, because at this stage I have spoken only about what Mr Berry said. High tech comes up from time to time. We applaud the Government for even talking about the potential of high tech in the ACT because we all agree that it has an enormous potential. However, what does the Government do? Under its nose, in comes Wayne Goss, about two or three months ago, offering all sorts of bickies to Canberra's high-tech industries - high-tech industries that have a world renowned reputation. This is done under the Chief Minister's nose, and nothing happens about it. What does this Government do about high-tech industries? It produces lots of glossy brochures which look magnificent, but it does nothing to create jobs in the ACT.
What can it do? Mr Kaine mentioned payroll tax. We know that not only Liberal governments think about payroll tax, because Carmen Lawrence, Wayne Goss and other Labor Premiers have given payroll tax incentives to certain industries in order to create jobs. What about occupational health and safety? Mr Berry stood up in this place - great fanfare, a media conference - saying, "We want uniform standards". We said, "We agree with that, Mr Berry. We applaud you for standing up and saying what you think ought to happen. But do something about it. Do not just talk about it". We do not have uniform standards. In fact, Canberra is one out. That is costing jobs, believe it or not. Had you consulted with all the industries that you targeted in your legislation, they would have told you - they did tell you - that it is going to cost jobs. So what you are doing is doing the radical things that are, in fact, costing jobs and not creating them.
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