Page 1917 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 June 1994
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Madam Speaker, I do not think I can be clearer in my attitude than I have been now and earlier today. It is unacceptable legislation. This Assembly should not accept it in its present form, and the Government should be told to go away and have another go and to do justice to the 23,000 people the legislation is supposed to encompass.
MR DE DOMENICO (8.47): Madam Speaker, on 17 June 1993, when we were debating whether to establish a select committee or not, and today, when we were debating the committee report that was presented, my words were:
... [the] formation of a separate ACT public service is perhaps the most important issue that is going to be faced by this Assembly, and perhaps assemblies after this one. The proposal to establish a separate ACT public service needs to take into account ... the financial obligations of the Commonwealth Government, the terms and conditions of employment of current Commonwealth officers and the future entitlements of current employees and future employees of any future ACT public service. The importance of open, detailed and full public consultation on this matter must be recognised. The opportunity of establishing a highly professional, innovative, flexible and cost-effective public service for the benefit of the ACT community requires input from all interested parties.
I think everybody in this Assembly would agree.
Madam Speaker, Mr Kaine quite adequately said that the amount of time available to his committee - the committee that I had previously chaired - was negligible in comparison to the time that the Chief Minister and this Government have had to put forward a Bill which can be called innovative, flexible and all the sorts of things that everybody agreed that it should be. We all know that the Chief Minister was first notified by the Prime Minister in April 1992. I recall that date quite well. At that stage another committee that Ms Szuty and I were members of was travelling to Brisbane. I recall having breakfast with Ms Szuty and saying, "Did you realise that the Prime Minister has written to the Chief Minister suggesting that she should get on her bike and really start getting some work done in order to establish our public service?".
I can also recall the concern expressed by the Government in June 1993 as to why this Assembly would dare contemplate having a select committee looking at the public service. The Government said, "That is a terrible thing to do. Tut, tut! We do not need this sort of thing". I think the words used were, "This is another political stunt by the Liberals". The Assembly disagreed with that comment. In fact, they set up that select committee. Then, what did the Chief Minister suggest? The first thing she suggested was that the only reason why the Liberal Party wanted a select committee was to stall the process. In June 1993 she was talking about the process being stalled. The committee, under my chairmanship, went to South Australia and the Northern Territory and talked face to face to people in those two jurisdictions. That had not been done before. In April 1992 the Prime Minister said, "Start, Chief Minister". It took until June 1993 for anyone to go interstate and talk to the people who had gone through the process, so that we would not reinvent the wheel in a lot of areas.
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