Page 776 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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The Minister said that there had been a steady rate of progress in the completion and certification of enterprise agreements. Ironically, on the same day the Minister came into this place and said that, a representative of the ACT branch of the Australian Workers Union, I think it was, was reported in the Canberra Times as decrying and speaking against enterprise agreements. So while the Minister was suggesting what a wonderful thing the completion of enterprise agreements was, the AWU was saying the opposite.
I also note that on page 3 of the Minister's statement he said:
The ACT Government is seeking to ensure that a mirror agreement will apply to its own public sector.
We all know that at that stage the Minister had not even conceded that a lot of work needed to be done to establish our own public sector. That statement might imply that the TLC views were different from those of the ACTU. The Minister saying that "the ACT Government is seeking to ensure" would seem to suggest that he had not had the imprimatur of or even discussed it with the local Trades and Labour Council.
It was also interesting to note some other things the Minister said, and I quote from the last paragraph on page 3:
The ACT legislative framework will enable the application of complementary arrangements for unpaid work experience of up to 240 hours a year for senior school students.
This is another thing that was said in the Carmichael report, and we applaud the Minister for suggesting that that should be happening. The Minister went on to talk about a national strategy for construction workers. I remind the Minister that, since 1983, following the unanimous suggestions of a working party on which Mr Lamont and I sat, and Mr McDonald from time to time, one of the things he could have done to reduce the cost of workers compensation was to ensure that the ACT, like every other jurisdiction in this country, had a termination clause in its Workers Compensation Act. We may be getting close to agreement to a termination clause; my advice is that it is still to come. We have been waiting 10 years. Ironically, the Minister did not use the Labour Ministers Conference to suggest that he had been waiting for 10 years for something to be done and still had not done it. Interestingly, the Minister did suggest:
Significant progress has been made in improving Australia's record as regards ratification of ILO conventions.
At the same time, nothing was said about the 10,000 members rule that we would still get to ratify. He went on to say:
The ACT has been particularly active and, in recent months, has advised the Federal Government that it can agree to the ratification of a further 16 conventions.
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