Page 36 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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MRS CARNELL: Obviously Mr Connolly would leave out the buses. That is without any doubt. If you do not do this work, work that every other State government has done already, you cannot determine what sort of public service you need. You cannot determine what the public service should look like. You cannot determine how our public service should be re-engineered to fit the management structure and the requirements of the employees - something that the Follett Government does not seem to care about at all. People have changed. People's expectations of the workplace have changed, and they should change. Every other government in this country, every business and every organisation in this country, has been through a period of dramatic change at the workplace level over the last five years. I do not believe that there is an organisation in this country that has the same management structure now as it had five years ago - that is, any successful organisation or structure in this country - except, of course, the ACT Government. There is, to use the Chief Minister's own words, no micro-economic reform, just a mechanical change; no change to the management structure, just tinkering at the edges. It was very interesting - - -
Mr Kaine: A new logo.
MRS CARNELL: A new logo, and some nice wine, hopefully. Even the Public Sector Union itself said that it was concerned. This is the union that supposedly has been consulted. They were concerned that all we were going to get, to use their words, was a new logo and possibly new letterheads. If they are concerned, heaven help the ACT after 1 July this year. These are the people that supposedly have been consulted.
With the reduction in Commonwealth funding to the ACT we all know that the public service is under pressure, but where is that pressure being felt? It is being felt at the service delivery end. It is being felt by the bus drivers; it is being felt by the people who are trying to run our health system without enough money, without enough beds, without enough nurses, and without the capacity even to keep operating lists at anything like a reasonable level.
Mr Berry: Rubbish! All emergencies are being treated.
MRS CARNELL: That is all that is being treated. Spot on. Heaven help you if you are not an emergency. In fact, surgeons in this town are sending people to casualty because it is the only way that they can get anyone into the hospital. People with secondary malignancies, Mr Berry, are going into our hospital via emergency. It is simply unacceptable. The whole reason for that sort of a problem in our health system is that Ms Follett and her Government have not addressed the very real problems that exist in setting up a new public service by looking at the management structure. The public servants are trying to make this city a better place, trying to keep our health system running, trying to keep the services running in this city, trying to keep buses on the road, trying to offer $6m in savings to this Government but not being allowed to do so because Mr Berry has a very strange view on what enterprise based agreements are.
Mr Berry and Mr Lamont made some pretty unfortunate comments about Mr De Domenico's approach to this MPI. They seem to think that industrial relations have absolutely nothing to do with the new public service. That is certainly not the view of other organisations and other governments in this country, including the Federal Government. The Federal Government agree and support the fact that workplace based agreements are the only way to give flexibility to this new employment culture.
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