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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 143 ..

MR WHITECROSS (4.31): Mrs Carnell talked at great length about confrontation. Of course, we all know that the reason why there was the industrial action that we saw this morning and industrial action across the ACT Government services was her confrontationist attitude. What we have been debating here is a particular example of confrontationalism by this Government by threatening payroll deductions in order to put pressure on unions. Mrs Carnell tries to say that the fault for the confrontation lies with the unions, but the evidence has been again and again that the confrontation is on the Government's side.

In the last two days we had an extraordinary situation. On Monday night Mrs Carnell said, "I am not talking to you, because the AEU has a ban on voluntary out of school hours activities". On Tuesday night she was negotiating with the AEU. On Monday night she cannot talk to a union because there is a ban on, and on Tuesday she is talking to the very union which has the ban on and which she said that she could not talk to on Monday. She is not being consistent. She is not being confrontationist! The thing is that she has fixed in her mind how she wants to resolve this dispute, and she will not address the first principle of negotiation, which is looking at what you want; looking at what the other side wants; and trying to bring the two together. That is what she will not do.

She inflames the situation all the time by insulting the intelligence of members of this Assembly and members of the community in relation to this matter. In relation to payroll deductions, we have a situation where she says, "We are going to cancel your payroll deductions - - -

Mrs Carnell: No, we did not say that. We said that you had to fill in the forms.

MR WHITECROSS: I have not finished my sentence, Mrs Carnell. Calm yourself. She says, "We are going to cancel your payroll deductions unless you sign a new form". Where is the choice in that? Without any action on my behalf, without any choice being exercised on my behalf, my payroll deductions will be cancelled. I have not chosen anything, but Mrs Carnell will cancel my payroll deductions. The fact is, as Labor members have said again and again, that we have chosen to have union fees deducted from our pay. All union members have chosen to have union fees deducted from their pay. We chose that when we joined the union. If we subsequently decide to get those fees paid in a different way, we can chose that. But, in the meantime, we have made a choice and we are entitled to have that choice honoured by the Government.

The Government is not fooling anyone when they say, "This is about choice". This is not about choice; this is about harassment of union members. One of the mantras of the Liberal Party is efficiency. Can you imagine anything more inefficient than asking people to fill out another piece of paper saying something that they have already said? Can you imagine anything more inefficient than having staff in the department processing 5,000, 4,000, 3,000 - who knows how many? - forms which say, "Yes, I still want my payroll deductions which I have already signed a form for."? What an inefficient procedure that is! There is no justification for that in terms of efficiency. There is no justification in terms of choice.

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