Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

None . . Page.. 931 ..

MR WHITECROSS (10.48): Mr Speaker - - -

Mr Moore: You have already spoken twice, Andrew.

MR WHITECROSS: I closed the debate, and then everybody spoke.

MR SPEAKER: You have spoken twice, Mr Whitecross.

Mr Berry: Yes; but he is closing it off now.

MR SPEAKER: Nobody is about to close the debate at all. There is no closing of a debate, because there is not a substantive motion. You can seek leave, if you wish. As Mr Moore has said repeatedly, you can do anything in the Assembly if you seek leave, unfortunately.

MR WHITECROSS: I seek leave to speak again.

Leave granted.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, I just wanted to rise to respond to something Mr Moore said after I thought I had already finished off the debate. Mr Moore said that putting ACTEW back under the coverage of the Public Sector Management Act would undo what we have just done in corporatising ACTEW. It is very hard to understand what Mr Moore means by that, unless he means that the corporatisation of ACTEW is about altering, reducing and diminishing the terms and conditions of employment and the protections that are specified in the Public Sector Management Act for ACTEW employees. What other interpretation can we have of what Mr Moore said? No-one has been able to explain it differently to me, and Mr Moore seems to have just confirmed it. I understood from Mr Moore's speech in the in-principle stage that the corporatisation of ACTEW was about ephemeral things to do with management, such as the self-image of ACTEW employees and ACTEW management, their reinvigoration and the thrust forward into the new, glorious world of the national electricity grid. That was the sort of message I got from Mr Moore's discussion in the in-principle stage; but now Mr Moore is telling me that the essence of corporatisation is removing ACTEW workers from the coverage of the Public Sector Management Act so that they are not covered by the appeal, grievance and merit principles, the long service leave or maternity leave provisions or the general principles about conflicts of interest and not taking improper advantage of positions, et cetera, which are in the Public Sector Management Act. Mr Moore's speech confirms my misgivings about corporatisation, and it confirms my belief that the correct thing to do in this case is to vote for my amendment.

MR MOORE (10.50): Having spoken only once, Mr Speaker, I will not need to seek leave, as Mr Whitecross did, to point out to him that what he is practising is what is known as selective hearing. My children are particularly good at it, as most people's children are, and I have been known to practise it myself occasionally. In this case, I had said that that is, in part, what will be happening. If this were supported it would, in part, be undoing what we have just done, which is the corporatisation. I chose those words carefully. Your summary of what I said indicates that you did not listen to what I said, because it was certainly how I expressed myself earlier this evening.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .