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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 23 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

"You have money at the end of the three-year period. You should pay for it with that $20m-odd that you expect to be in surplus at the end of the 1997-98 financial year". I would point out that that money is coming in the 1997-98 financial year, not now. We have to pay the money now, not then; but that is another matter. The fact is that an amount is quantifiable. Not even the union movement disputes the fact that that will cost the community $27m.

The issue that has to be answered by anybody who enters this debate, no matter who they are, is this: Where will that money come from? Members of the Labor Party are right to say that it need not come from rates. It could come from another quarter. It could be put into other forms of government taxes or charges, or could be translated into cuts in government spending. Yes, that is true. But, if they maintain that we should embrace the payment of that $27m per annum, it is their obligation to tell us and the community how they would pay that money. This Government maintains that, with a record borrowing this financial year, with a very large problem of Commonwealth reductions in spending on the ACT, we have no choice but to hold the line on a substantial increase in pay - an increase which is more than double the rate of inflation and which goes against the practice of previous ACT governments as well as the present Government, as far as enterprise bargaining and productivity-based pay rises are concerned, and which also flies against Commonwealth Government parameters on enterprise bargaining negotiation. In all those circumstances it is right, absolutely right, for this Government to hold the line on those pay rises. I say to those opposite: Have the honesty and the guts to tell the ACT community where you would find the money to pay for this pay rise.

Mr Speaker, there is much grandstanding and bleating about how terrible this Government is being about its refusal to accede to these pay rises. Members opposite would expect some members of this place or members of the public to conveniently forget the significant industrial confrontations which occurred over the last few years under Labor governments, or under a Labor government particularly. It is interesting to note that the sort of language being used, the refusal to negotiate select points in the dispute, and the hard line supposedly taken by the Government in this dispute are reflected in the kind of thing which I think was very clearly happening during the doctors dispute in the hospital.

Mr Berry: But they are not a union and they are not registered under the Industrial Relations Act. They would not go to the Industrial Relations Commission.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, if Mr Berry says that the analogy breaks down because they are not a union - - -

Mr Berry: And they get paid $300,000 a year.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry is very fond of calling the AMA a union, and with some justification, I would say. Using your terminology, Mr Berry, you were negotiating with a union, the Australian Medical Association, and the language of confrontation was there then. I hope that members in this place who were not experiencing that particular dispute do not imagine that taking a strong stand and being on occasions apparently hard line is a position that can be taken only by a Liberal government.

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