Page 2303 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 June 1994
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Wednesday, 22 June 1994
______________________
MADAM SPEAKER (Ms McRae) took the chair at 10.30 am and read the prayer.
MADAM SPEAKER: It being 10.30 am, pursuant to the resolution of the Assembly of 16 June 1994, I call on Executive business, the order of the day relating to the public sector legislation.
PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGEMENT BILL 1994
Detail Stage
Clause 1
Debate resumed from 16 June 1994.
MR KAINE (10.31): Madam Speaker, I move:
That the debate be adjourned.
It must be quite clear to the Government that there are still major concerns held in connection with this Bill by important sectors of our community and by important organisations which will be materially affected once it is put into place. There are a number of reasons why the debate should be adjourned, Madam Speaker. The first is the one that I have insisted upon right from the outset with this Bill, and that is that the Government's approach to the preparation of the Bill was fundamentally flawed from the outset. What we have is a flawed Bill that will create a second-rate public service, not the first-rate public service that we should be seeking to set in place.
The second reason is that there are continuing concerns. Those concerns have been expressed consistently since this Bill was tabled, and they remain in place. They have not been resolved. They were expressed by the Public Sector Union, in particular, as recently as at 8.30 this morning on public radio. That organisation, the biggest organisation whose members will be affected by this Bill, remains concerned about significant elements of this Bill. Despite ongoing negotiations - I presume that there have been negotiations with the Government; we have not been told whether there have been or not - and despite the involvement of the Industrial Relations Commission, those issues have not yet been resolved. I believe that it would be fundamentally wrong for this Assembly to put into place legislation about which major issues have not been resolved, in the somehow unreal expectation that they can be resolved in the future without affecting very large numbers of our employees.
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