Page 4048 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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MRS CARNELL: What we are suggesting - - -
Mr Humphries: She does not need medical help.
Mr Berry: If she does, she will not get it in this town.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Berry, order!
MRS CARNELL: What we are suggesting is that today the appropriate action would be to appoint an independent arbitrator. How about Justice Else-Mitchell, somebody who is well regarded in this community and who has worked for both sides of this parliament? Let us look for somebody in this community who has some experience, who has the respect of both sides, to sit down with the Minister and the AMA and come up with a result. That is an approach that will work. As we know, the IRC is a wage fixing tribunal. It has little jurisdiction over, and certainly little expertise in, setting the price of services for industrial contractors. It has little expertise in this area.
Mr Lamont suggested that the Industrial Commission of New South Wales was used in this situation - and it was, because it has to be, under the New South Wales hospitals Act. That was the reason it was used, and it was a wonderful success! What they did actually produced the dispute in New South Wales. The New South Wales Government then had to pursue a sensible dispute settling mechanism, which I understand is progressing well and will produce a result in the near future. That is what happened in New South Wales, Mr Lamont, not something else that you were - - -
Mr Lamont: The VMOs here have rejected it.
MRS CARNELL: I thought what we were trying to do today was not to have some sort of amazing "Let's have a go at each other" debate, but look for something that will work in this dispute. What we have to do, in the first instance, is what happened in New South Wales, and that is to extend the contracts, as would normally be the case in any other dispute mechanism. In any dispute mechanism, what normally happens is that the current wage or the current contract, if contracts are used this way, as Mr Lamont assures me they are, would be extended while the process of conciliation or arbitration went on. That is what has happened in New South Wales.
So we have, first of all, to extend the contracts and get the VMOs back to work this afternoon. Extend the contracts until Christmas. Let us not give it a long period; let us just go until Christmas, and then let us see Mr Berry do something positive and find an independent arbitrator who will be accepted by both sides. Quite honestly, the community would be on your side, Mr Berry. Let us look at an independent arbitrator and let us sit down and solve this dispute by Christmas. Mr Berry, if you think calling doctors greedy, money-grubbing people who do not care abut patients, unprofessional - - -
Mr Connolly: That is what you call blue-collar unionists when they are in dispute.
MRS CARNELL: I have never called anybody any of those things, Mr Connolly. If you think that is the way to fix up a dispute, Mr Berry, you just do not understand. Calling people names has never sorted out a dispute.
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