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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2913 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

Let us look at my involvement in the enterprise bargaining process. The Opposition fails to realise that it would be entirely inappropriate for me to intervene in negotiations between management and unions. As a former union delegate, Mr Berry should know that. But let me remind Mr Berry: As the Minister for Industrial Relations, I have made the key decisions at the key points and have had regular reports from those officials responsible for the negotiations.

I remind the Assembly that it was I who agreed to discussions happening with the unions and the Chief Minister on Monday of this week; that it was I who agreed to the negotiating position discussed with officials and unions on Sunday of this week. It is simply not usual practice for Ministers to run enterprise bargaining negotiations. However, it is usual practice for the Government to intervene at those stages when there may be significant industrial disputation threatened. We took such action recently. If matters disintegrate again, we will do so again.

The actions that this Government was prepared to take under section 170 were considered only after the TLC gave the Government no alternative by invoking this little-used provision of the Act. In other words, there was nothing else in law that the Government could do. I reiterate that, by the unions taking such action, the Government was left with little option but to consider its powers under this provision. The actions that we were contemplating were entirely legal under the legislation which was passed by a Federal Labor government.

Let us look at the protected action. Mr Berry should be instructed as to what it is, because it has come in since he left the union movement. He might not know what it is. Part VIB of the Industrial Relations Act 1988, which relates specifically to enterprise bargaining, permits unions and employers to initiate a bargaining period as part of that negotiating process. The bargaining period commences seven days after a union gives an employer notice of its intentions. The union may then give an employer 72 hours' written notice of its members' intentions to engage in direct industrial action against the employer. In these circumstances, the industrial action is protected and an action does not lie under any law in force in the ACT.

Under the same section of the Act, an employer is entitled to lock out all or any relevant employees as a response to protected industrial action taken by employees. In reply to any accusation that we are reactive, I say, "Yes; we react when we have to react under the law, because that is all that is available to us". Action to lock out all or any relevant employees may also be taken by the employer to support or advance the employer's claims as part of the enterprise bargaining process. The employer is required also to give the employees 72 hours' notice of its intentions in this regard, and in these circumstances that action is then protected.

Let us look at the actions taken by the unions to initiate protected action. A mass meeting of union members was held last Friday, 8 December, as Mr Berry said, in Civic Square. The sole purpose of the meeting - which was poorly attended, according to an unidentified union official; not one of the Government's members,

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