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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 28 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

precipitate a confrontationalist debate that adds nothing. I am disappointed that they have not come up with something more positive. I assert that we have already wasted an hour-and-a-half or more on a debate that adds nothing to this process. I wish that some members of the Assembly would look at the issues and not - to quote Mr Berry - engage in a publicity stunt.

MR WHITECROSS (12.15): Mr Speaker, I rise to speak to this motion and this amendment because I am very concerned at the attitude being taken on the Government benches. Mr Kaine tells us that this is not a serious matter; it is just a stunt. Quite frankly, from the point of view of people on our side of the house and from the point of view of the community at large, it is a serious issue. The people out there are wondering when the Government is going to get around to taking it seriously and resolving it, instead of playing games with it. That is what they have been doing so far.

Mr De Domenico and Mrs Carnell have demonstrated again and again in their speeches that their minds are fixed. They do not have the maturity, they do not have the humility, they do not have the wisdom and the judgment to approach the business of bargaining in a flexible way. Instead, they have their fixed opinion that this is an election stunt and that they have to oppose the unions at all costs because Kate Lundy is the president of the TLC and is also a Labor candidate in the election. Because Kate Lundy is president of the TLC and is also an election candidate for the Labor Party, they are going to oppose these negotiations at all costs. They are not going to do anything about the Government's position because that would play into the hands of the evil unions who are doing this as an election stunt.

Yet Mrs Carnell's own evidence was that the first industrial action in relation to this negotiation occurred back in November last year, long before there was an election. There was no election last year; yet last year there was industrial action. Mrs Carnell and Mr De Domenico try to say that this is all to do with election politics. It is not to do with election politics.

Mrs Carnell: What is it to do with?

MR WHITECROSS: It is to do with the intransigence of the Government in negotiating this matter. The sooner they put that particular fixed, narrow and stupid idea that it is an election stunt out of their minds, the sooner we will get this dispute solved.

The next silly piece of inflexibility by the Government is that we have to have agency bargaining. The Government says, "We have to have agency bargaining; agency bargaining, agency bargaining, agency bargaining, agency bargaining. If we do not have agency bargaining, we are not going to play. We are not going to talk. We are not going to negotiate, because we want agency bargaining". Mr Speaker, the main argument for agency bargaining is that the workers who trade off their conditions and who make the effort in their agency benefit from the pay increase. In this case, Mr Speaker, the unions have decided that they do not want to go down that track. The unions have decided that they would rather talk about things across the board. The Government does not want to do that, Mr Speaker. The Government has decided that they are not going to negotiate any across-the-board productivity improvements; they are only going to argue for agency bargaining.

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