Page 1054 - Week 04 - Thursday, 1 April 1993
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The Government does welcome that announcement as it is, I believe, a very significant step in the Federal Government's commitment to vacate these areas in the ACT. I understand that the whole of the defence land in Belconnen and Symonston will be degazetted as national land upon the relocation of the existing facilities. Any costs to the ACT Government for this land are yet to be negotiated. Madam Speaker, the urban renewal program will include both of these areas in Lawson and Symonston once acquisition by the Territory is imminent. The availability of that land in Lawson and Symonston is consistent with and in fact of great help to this Government's aim of consolidating urban growth in Canberra.
ACTEW Enterprise Agreement
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. The Electrical Trades Union, or whatever it is now called, has delegates who, only in the last 24 hours I understand, have passed a motion of no confidence in you, the Minister, and have called on you to resign because of your "obvious bungling of the ACTEW enterprise agreement". I also understand that the head of that union has dubbed today April Wayne's Day. I ask the Minister: Given your very close connection and involvement with the union movement, do you regard this measure as a slap in the face? What does this motion do to your credibility as a Minister for Industrial Relations in a Labor government?
MR BERRY: Madam Speaker, no, I do not regard it as a slap in the face at all. One expects unions to be agitated by particular industrial circumstances, but I am buoyed by the fact that the Labour Council of the ACT have supported the Government stand on this issue because they know what it means to the Territory as a whole. They know that it is important to have in place an industrial arrangement which is fair to everybody, which is equitable, and which brings the best results for the community as a whole. I will read to you from a press release which was put out today by the Trades and Labour Council. It states:
The TLC Executive resolved today to formally intervene in the AIRC Hearings concerning the industrial dispute of ACTEW, and the hearings concerning the Enterprise Agreement with the ETU.
"It is Council's role to support the maintenance of a fair and equitable agreement across the entire ACT Public Service", said TLC Secretary, Charles McDonald.
"Accordingly, we have called on the ACT Government to support its agreement with ACT unions of December last year.
ACTEW was a party to that agreement, and equity requires that the broad principles be followed for all employees in that organisation", Mr McDonald said.
This is not an issue which concerns just 30 or 40 per cent of ACTEW employees; it concerns the whole of the public sector. At the same time the ETU ought not be isolated from receiving the benefits of a wages arrangement. That is why the Government is moving quickly to mesh, where possible, the arrangements reached with ACTEW with the overall arrangement that we reached and promised in December last year.
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