Page 4099 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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The conference considered recommendations to standardise licensing of plumbers and gasfitters. Considerable progress has been made towards simpler and more uniform licensing arrangements. Ministers have now asked officials to try to resolve outstanding points of difference and to report to the next Labour Ministers conference. An ongoing priority issue is the adjustment of employment conditions to assist workers with family responsibilities. In common with the other jurisdictions, the ACT is looking at the problems of workers on training contracts taking parental leave. The issue is not the access to such leave by apprentices and trainees - that is provided for in our parental leave Act which, you might recall, I think the Liberal Party resisted - but the problems for employers in covering the absence, and for both the employer and the workers in resuming the apprenticeship or traineeship at the end of a period of parental leave.
Similarly, we are looking at our long service leave legislation to ensure that entitlements to leave are not precluded because of broken periods of employment due to family responsibilities. The conference also noted that substantial progress has been made towards national uniformity in occupational health and safety standards and arrangements. Labour Ministers remain resolved to achieve this objective.
To sum up, the Labour Ministers conference has again proved a forum for healthy debate and for moving forward to modernise and harmonise labour relations in Australia. On the main agenda item, the Commonwealth's legislation proposals, there was no consensus, as you would expect. The non-Labor States see enterprise bargaining as a way of reducing wages and conditions for workers. The Labor States, on the other hand, support enterprise bargaining as a way of maximising productivity and efficiency improvement, and putting bargaining power in the hands of employers and workers directly concerned with the profitability and viability of the enterprise.
However, if workers are to have confidence in enterprise bargaining processes, they need the continued support of modern and relevant award structures. They also need to be able to involve the relevant trade unions in the bargaining process. Through its legislation reform, the Commonwealth Government is setting in place an industrial relations framework that will help Australian businesses meet the challenges of the 1990s. In the interests of fairness and equity, it has properly resisted the arguments of those urging total deregulation of the labour market. The New Right group of the Liberal Party is good at that. These arguments usually mask the objective of reducing the wages and conditions, and thereby the living standards, of Australia's workers. The ACT Government will not be diverted from its economic and social justice strategies by the ideology of the so-called rationalists. We support the direction of the Commonwealth Government's industrial relations reforms. I present a copy of this statement and move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
Debate (on motion by Mr De Domenico) adjourned.
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