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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 53 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

happened, and that is the real issue behind this censure motion. If you have a look at the industrial relations beast, the unions recognised that they would have to force this Government to negotiations early in the piece when they sought to establish a bargaining period. Mrs Carnell described that as the election politics of pulling the umpire out.

The process is to force the other party into a negotiating period, and there is protected industrial action if unions seek to take that option and there is the option of lockouts if the employer seeks to take it. They have chosen to exercise, for the first time, the option of lockouts, and that has influenced the debate. It has, in effect, driven the unions even closer together, because there is nothing more unifying than something that seems to be coming from the right wing of politics in terms of industrial relations. Let us leave out the Federal election for a moment because at that point the Federal election had not been announced.

Mr Moore: Come on! They had been campaigning for a year, and you know it.

MR BERRY: I accept that the Federal election had to be announced and there was lots of debate about what people described as a false campaign and so on, but the fact of the matter is that the unions took that line to force the employer into a negotiating period. That is still going. Of course, the employers absolutely refuse to negotiate. They demonstrated that as late as last night, when the employers refused to negotiate because the unions would not agree with everything Mrs Carnell said.

Mrs Carnell: The unions this morning argued that they wanted the umpire still out of it.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell keeps trying to create the false impression that because there is a bargaining period in place the umpire is out. The onus is on you to negotiate. That is what the bargaining period is about. You failed, and that is the issue of the censure motion.

Another matter Mr Moore raised in the context of this debate was his fixation with the amendment to the budget. I have to say to Mr Moore that that was a failed and illegal attempt to amend the budget, and I trust that Mr Osborne, as a member of the Legal Affairs Committee, would not persist with that approach. We said in the course of the budget debate, "You support us and we will block any line of this debate, send the Government away to amend it, and they could come back". Neither Mr Moore nor Mr Osborne would support us. We opposed the budget. Mr Moore should have come with us on that score; indeed, he could have supported us on the budget line concerned with education. The problem for Mr Moore is that he is continuing to persist with this failed and illegal block.

Mrs Carnell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I think the member is reflecting on a decision that has already been made.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, I uphold the point of order.

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