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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 21 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I would have to disagree that this is all about money. Mrs Carnell said that $35,000 is the average wage. That supports the figures that we have been given, and that means that there are quite a lot of people in the community under that. To bring up emotive arguments like, "These unions are stopping children going on excursions on school buses - - -

Mr Stefaniak: They are.

MS TUCKER: Of course; but why have they been driven to that point? What is it like when you are on $27,000 a year - I have been on $27,000 a year - and you have children at school and you have to pay voluntary school donations, subject levies, and extra money for those excursions? It is getting harder and harder to survive in this town when you are at the bottom end of the salary range. This argument is not about greedy unionists. Perhaps there is an element of that in some unions. I would not argue that they are all pure white. What I do know is that the number of people in this town who are on a low wage deserve to have a decent salary from which to provide for their families. You are not seeing that coming out of this sort of arrangement which is going to be productivity based, and that is the other thing I would like to talk about.

We do not hear very much discussion about productivity and how it is defined. We have brought it up in the past. Mr Moore has brought it up in the past. There are real concerns about how you get productivity and how you show productivity in certain areas of work, and this is to do with the very important work that happens in our community, such as the work that you have been talking about - health. This is not just about the health budget; this is about health service. I have also worked in hospitals as a nurse. I know the stresses that nurses work under. I know the need for the support that they have had in their shiftwork. They are not in cushy jobs. They should not be treated in the way that you are treating them. I do not think you have a real understanding of the work that they do. The point is that the nurses are being forced into a situation where their family responsibilities - most nurses are women, and Liberal governments usually support the family - are becoming more difficult for them because now, to make up those hours, they are working another shift. If you look in detail at how this can affect a family's ability to support itself in the nurturing sense and the availability of child care in this town, it is a real issue. So this is not just about money.

The money question is a political decision that the Liberal Government made about how they would end up after three years. They refuse to budge from that and just ask everyone in this place, "How would you pay for it?". The Greens have offered suggestions about revenue raising measures. We have talked about trying to cap executive salaries to try to bring equity into this system. We have a real concern for the people at the bottom of our society, the people at the bottom of the salary range, and I believe that that is fundamentally what the unions are working towards. So I cannot accept this line about greedy unionists.

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