Page 985 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
That will achieve significant savings. It will mean that the situation will no longer occur where you wander over to the Magistrates Court on a Monday morning and see 15 or 20 police officers effectively hanging about waiting for cases to be called on and usually giving evidence that lasts for minutes, if not seconds. Those police will be redeployed out policing or, in many cases, will no longer have to come in on overtime. It is very common that when a policeman or policewoman is required to give evidence in court on a certain day they may well have been rostered on duty the previous night and so have to come in, effectively backing up to a double shift and attracting all the additional costs for that.
The procedures relating to the presentation of cases are being done in such a way that the rights of defendants will be protected. It is important to stress that if the court or the defendant wishes the police informant to attend - say, if the defendant wishes to clarify a point, even though he is pleading guilty - the matter will be adjourned to enable the police informant to attend. So we are doing it in such a way that we protect the rights of defendants, but we will significantly reduce the requirement for police to be giving quite unnecessary evidence. This is another example of the way this Government is going about achieving savings to the police budget in such a way that we do not adversely impact on services and we have police out doing useful and constructive things, policing rather than perhaps hanging about court, getting bored and frustrated and not protecting the community.
ACTEW Enterprise Agreement
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is to the Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Berry. I remind him of his answer to the question asked previously by Mr Cornwell. I also remind the Minister that subsection 38(1) of the Electricity and Water Act says:
Where the Authority satisfies the Minister that it has suffered financial detriment as a result of complying with a direction of the Minister under section 37 -
that is the direction Mr Connolly alluded to -
the Authority is entitled to be reimbursed by the Territory the amount that the Minister determines in writing to be the amount of that financial detriment.
I ask the Minister: Will the Government move towards reimbursing ACTEW the extra $500,000 that would have been saved had this agreement been allowed to proceed? Is the Minister aware that, by denying ACTEW the ability to save $500,000 and the Government having to pay a reimbursement, the ACT taxpayer is paying $1m for socialist ideology?
MR BERRY: They would be getting it cheap at that price. The facts of the matter are that there is an agreement, which I talked about earlier, that is alleged by some to provide a saving of $500,000. I have not tested that, but there is indeed in place an agreement with the remainder of the work force which is about to set us on a course of efficiency and workplace bargaining and which potentially will save us much more. So you cannot, on the one hand, say that a saving suggested in some areas should not be passed up if there are potential savings somewhere else.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .