Page 4499 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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very clearly express their priority. Employed people are more important than unemployed people. The Liberal Party does not hold the same view. In the United States, for example, where the recession has been harsh and damaging, the unemployment rate is 6 per cent. The difference is their industrial relations system, which is flexible.
In trying to introduce flexibility, the Federal Government has introduced hoops for Australian employers and employees to jump through. First, you have to start above the minimum award. This limits the flexibility of negotiating less than minimum pay for other benefits, which may actually be worth more to the individual employee than the monetary consideration. Secondly, you have to notify the union, even if there is not a union member in sight, even if nobody wants the union involved. Then you have to go to the Industrial Relations Commission and argue the case, even if everybody has already agreed. Then the union representative, who may have nothing to do with your business or your employees, can come along and object to the deal. It is loaded in favour of the union movement.
The Ministers conference discussed approving strike action as part of enterprise bargaining - ridiculous! - but in the same breath said that the Industrial Relations Commission will have the power to make orders that a party bargain in good faith. That is impossible. Perhaps the Minister would like to tell us how he has applied good faith to the industrial relations negotiation with the VMOs.
Mr Berry: Mr Kaine, did you write this?
Mr Kaine: No, I do not know anything about industrial relations!
MR DE DOMENICO: I did. How can an order like this be imposed when the Minister himself refuses to act in good faith? Perhaps he will tell the house very shortly what he has done recently with the VMOs. The removal of laws which stop secondary boycotts is an unfair, unAustralian and dangerous move. It removes protection for business from the thuggery of the unions. The establishment of another court - a labour court - just imposes another bureaucratic structure on the whole process. The pay-back Bill, as it has been called, is full of holes. It fails its industrial relations obligations.
The argument that all we are interested in is reducing conditions is not true. Minimum award wages are supported by the Liberals. What we do not support is an industrial relations system which makes it harder or more difficult to employ people. In the ACT Government Service we want a system which allows departments flexibility and room to make the arrangements most suitable to their service delivery functions. In making enterprise agreements with administration officers in the Attorney-General's Department, the productivity trade-offs are going to be vastly different from those exchanged between management and staff of ACTION buses. Why should both be governed by the same rules?
We have a copy of the draft enterprise bargaining arrangements for ACT public sector employment - here they are, November 1993 - but where are the participants? Without this agreement, the Government cannot proceed with the separation of the ACT Government Service. We know where the participants are, because by letters that come into the Liberal Party on fax machines we have day
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