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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2910 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

This campaign, which has been conducted by the Government and, in particular, by Mr De Domenico, has been based on dishonesty and intimidation. That has been the process all the way through. Propagandise the work force by use of the public service media network; politicise the public service media network to threaten its employees. That went on for several weeks. I asked Mrs Carnell whether she would give the unions the same access to that network as the Government had. No; no chance of that. The Government does not mind sending all its propaganda through the taxpayer-funded computer network but would never allow the unions to respond. That is the history of the matter.

Most people in the community would have watched with horror as the threat of industrial chaos was provoked by this Minister in particular. We knew who was in the background, as I mentioned earlier, advising the Government on how it should act. There were no real surprises from this Minister. Because of all of his past rhetoric, it did not surprise anybody when it came to the thumping of the chest and the threats against workers by this Minister. The Liberal dogma was alive and out there, thrashing around. There was this confrontation; lock them out; and this continuous recipe for disaster promoted by this Minister.

Industrial relations requires a cool head. There is no room for cowboys. Enterprise bargaining puts the onus on all of the participants to enter with an open mind and to be genuine.

Mr De Domenico: What did you do in the VMOs dispute? What did you call the doctors during the VMO dispute? Were you a cool head when you called them all grubs and whatever? What did you do to the Fire Brigade when you locked out Bill Kerr? Remember? You locked out Bill Kerr because they would not give you the job.

MR BERRY: Mr De Domenico says, "What did you do to the doctors?". We got them to arbitration; that is what we did. We got them to arbitration, and you mucked the deal up. The Government left itself no room to move. The questions raised about whether the Government was genuine were quite reasonable questions, because the Government was never genuine. This is an issue about politicising an industrial dispute. It was typical conservative Liberal undercover policy.

While all of this was going on, their Federal counterparts were getting very nervous because they had heard about second-wave industrial relations policies which had been announced in Western Australia. They were listening to little Tony over here, lashing out at the workers. They were saying, "Hells bells; if this gets out we are in trouble. We cannot allow this sort of approach to become general news across Australia". Over the weekend the phones started ringing; and, by Monday, who is sitting on the sidelines? Mr De Domenico. Who has to manage the industrial relations negotiations with the union? His boss, Mrs Carnell; the one who appointed Mr Houlihan. The Feds became very nervous about the approach and put the heavies on this lot.

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