Page 1492 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
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Mr De Domenico: How high do you go when he says jump?
MR LAMONT: No higher and no lower than you do, Mr De Domenico, when a particular Treasurer of the Liberal Party says jump. What I will say to you, Mr De Domenico, is that that dispute is about the extension of award coverage. Do you understand the difference between an eligibility rule within the rules of a union and award coverage?
Mr De Domenico: Your arrogance is not fooling anybody.
MR LAMONT: Do you understand it? I am asking the question. Obviously you do not understand, so I will explain it to you. Unions are registered under the Industrial Relations Act, Mr Deputy Speaker, and they have a rule which says, amongst other things, that you are able to engage members in certain pursuits, and it outlines those pursuits. You then go along to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and ask them to create awards on behalf of those classes of employees. At times the AIRC will say yes, and at times they will say no. On this occasion the dispute is about whether or not a union, which technically may have coverage as far as eligibility is concerned, is seeking to have award coverage applied when there is already in existence a union with the same eligibility as far as their membership is concerned but with an award that does apply. That is the essential issue in dispute between the AWU and the CFMEU.
MR KAINE (3.41): Mr Deputy Speaker, quite frankly, this is the kind of debate that we should not need to have in this place. What Mr De Domenico said in discussing his matter of public importance is that there is a need to condemn industrial relations practices which discriminate. We just heard a great deal of sophistry from Mr Lamont justifying an industrial relations system that embeds discrimination. Mr Lamont, in his sophistry, said that it is not discrimination; it is merely preference. He spent a good deal of time justifying this concept of preference which, any way you cut it or look at it, is discrimination under a euphemism called preference.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I happen to believe that discrimination is unacceptable, and I think that today's society agrees with me. That is why, last year, this Assembly passed a Discrimination Act. We made discrimination on a wide range of grounds illegal in this Territory. One ground that was not included in the early stages was discrimination on the basis of age, because there were certain difficulties in defining it; but we have even incorporated age, and we have incorporated a provision that discrimination on the basis of membership or, if you like, non-membership of an organisation or body is illegal. That is the simple fact of the matter. That is the state of the law in this Territory. When you come to the point where discrimination prevents people getting employment in a world where there is 10 per cent unemployment, it is not only unacceptable; it is, frankly, obscene. I am confounded when I hear members of the Labor Government opposite justifying a position that denies people employment on the basis that they do not belong to a trade union - this euphemistic preference. I think they are too.
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