Page 3502 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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cannot even get this right? It reminds me of the debacle we witnessed earlier this year when one Minister said yes and one Minister said no to an enterprise bargaining agreement in ACTEW. The result was that thousands of ACT residents spent Easter without electricity while that was cleared up; and the lights still are not on in some Ministers' minds, because here we go again.
Another matter has been thrown out by the Industrial Relations Commission. It is back to the drawing board. Meanwhile more than 2,000 public servants, I am told, have rung the Government's voluntary separation scheme hot line to make inquiries. Look at the history and you will understand the significance of the numbers. In the last two years the Government, coincidentally, has paid out about $17m in redundancy packages. Yet the total reduction in the size of the public service is 152, despite the fact that the Government has accepted 698 redundancies now. If $17m over the last two years equals about 700 redundancies, what is the Government going to do with 2,000 inquiries or 2,500 inquiries? Who knows? The Chief Minister would not tell us. Where is the money coming from, or going to come from? What is the Government's strategy? We still do not know anything about that. There is no strategy whatsoever.
The Government has failed to develop a strategy to deal, in a meaningful and ordered way, with the reduction of the public service - if there is any reduction of the public service. This means that this whole important process is going to cause chaos, confusion and controversy. There is no doubt about that. All of this is for the sake of looking after some union mates. It is a futile effort. Even the unions are not happy. We all know what Ms Hall has said and we all know what Ms Sheehan and others have said.
Mrs Carnell: They were not impressed.
MR DE DOMENICO: They were not impressed. They were not consulted. The matter was chucked out by the Industrial Relations Commission.
Surely by now the "bull by the horns" approach must look like an option. With such an approach you make real decisions with vision, with definite goals and strategies; you are open and honest and straightforward with the community and with the unions; you may sometimes override vested interests in the interests of the whole community and obviously better government. I will not hold my breath, nor should any of us hold our breath. But surely it is obvious that by targeting the separations - as my colleague the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Carnell, suggested, as Trevor Kaine suggested when he was Chief Minister, as others have suggested, and in fact even as the unions and the Industrial Relations Commission have suggested - so many problems could have been avoided.
Ms Ellis: We must have missed that.
MR DE DOMENICO: You were not even here, Ms Ellis.
Ms Ellis: I have researched well, Mr De Domenico. Neither were you.
MR DE DOMENICO: At that stage I was president of the Chamber of Commerce. Unlike your party, the then Government consulted us. We were consulted. Mr Kaine was also aware of the situation when he asked the Chief Minister during question time on 15 September:
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