Page 262 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Stevenson, you will withdraw your comments, or I will be forced to name you.
Mr Stevenson: Which one?
MADAM SPEAKER: There are standing orders which do require you to not treat me with contempt. You will withdraw those comments that were deriding of my position.
Mr Stevenson: I take a point of order, Madam Speaker. To suggest that you - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: No, no, Mr Stevenson. I asked you - - -
Mr Stevenson: To suggest that you would take action because I had stood up is perhaps not the right manner in which a Speaker should operate.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Stevenson, I have no option - - -
Mr Stevenson: However, as you are on your feet, and as you have the power under this Assembly to chuck me out of here if I stand up for justice and a right to say something, I withdraw.
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is to the Minister for Urban Services. I preface my question by congratulating the Minister, and perhaps even Mr Lamont, for finalising the enterprise agreement between ACTION and the Transport Workers Union last night. Minister, noting that the TWU agreement signed last night was virtually identical to the agreements reached by ACTION and the TWU last year, what reasons can you give as to why ACTION commuters and the ACT community have been subjected to repeated strike action and disruption of bus services since last year? In other words, why did you not settle the dispute sooner?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, the ACT community would not have thanked us if we had signed off a wage proposal quickly to settle a dispute in ACTION buses, which then led to wage break-outs across the whole of the ACT Government Service, with leapfrogging wage claims. We have gone very carefully through this proposal, to guarantee that we will be delivering very substantial savings to the ACT community. The package that was agreed last night by senior ACT Government officials and Transport Workers Union officials, and which was ratified by a meeting of the transport workers membership at lunchtime today, will deliver very substantial savings to this community. It will deliver savings in the order of some $6m which will allow us to progress on our process of change at the workplace in ACTION buses.
Public transport reform has proven to be one of the most difficult and intractable problems for State governments around Australia, regardless of their political persuasion. In other parts of Australia we have seen strikes going for weeks or months. The Melbourne trams were tied up for months at a time a year or so ago. We have seen long outbursts of industrial action in other parts of Australia. This issue resulted in one full day's strike and a couple of morning and evening slowdowns and stoppages when there were stop-work meetings. I think that is not too high a price to pay for a process that will deliver ongoing micro-economic reform in the workplace at ACTION.
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