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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2909 ..

Mr De Domenico: Yes.

MR BERRY: Mr De Domenico says, "Yes", indicating that that is what he said. The unions were getting a bit sick of all of this nonsense and were starting to agitate on the issue. There were more and more threats of lockouts and more and more circulars, which became steadily more threatening, such as, "If you have been or will be involved in industrial action we can lock you out". You never mentioned that you would love to lock them out. You said, "We can lock you out and we will tell you when you can come back to work". The Minister was threatening the workers all the time. This is the style of industrial relations that we have had from this Government opposite. Mrs Carnell, allegedly, backed him up for a while, but that ended. I will come to that a little later.

Amid all of the hyperbole we read in the Canberra Times - this is where all the unions read it too, I might add - that the ACT Government had offered a $7 pay deal. They were most impressed to find that in the Canberra Times. They might then have substituted their fax machines and post office boxes for daily editions of the Canberra Times so that they could get all of their information from the Government through the newspaper, rather than bothering with post office boxes and fax machines. That was on 7 December. It agitated the unions somewhat to see in the newspaper that pay deals were being offered. A good-sized demonstration was organised in Civic Square, even though the Government had spent weeks threatening their workers with threats and intimidation. Still there were hundreds of workers concerned about what this Government was going to do. Mind you, anybody that took industrial action by turning up at that meeting would be subject to Mr De Domenico's threats to lock them out. The Government had indicated their intention to lock them out if they took that industrial action.

In this place on 5 December Mr Kaine asked a dorothy dixer of Mr De Domenico about the Government's pay offer. Mr De Domenico went on at length describing the pay offer. He said in the second paragraph of his answer:

This pay increase is already accounted for and, despite reports from the unions, has nothing to do with productivity savings. It is up front, no strings attached.

Initially, he says that it is up front, no strings attached; not one string; none at all. Later, after several more paragraphs, after another page of response to Mr Kaine's intelligent question, he says that there are no strings attached. He says that again. Lastly, when he decides to have a little shot at the unions, he says:

There are a couple of unions, particularly the CPSU and Ms Garvan, who disagree with this concept. Ms Garvan ought to get realistic, -

"Get realistic", Mr De Domenico says -

talk to her Federal colleagues and not say to her members, "We will continue to adopt a political campaign and deny you $7 per week, no strings attached".

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