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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 7 ..

MS FOLLETT: The Assembly did indeed pass the budget, and I will say again, for the record, that the Labor members of this Assembly opposed the budget because we did not agree with the Government's priorities. As we said at the time, the Government had allocated priorities; we believed that they had allocated the wrong priorities. We believed at the time, and we said so at the time, that they should have been spending more money on the real needs of our community. We said that. We opposed the budget.

Mrs Carnell has repeatedly insisted that she has no capacity to strike a reasonable enterprise bargain with her own work force. Mrs Carnell knows full well that there are funds available, quite apart from this Consolidated Fund surplus, which, if the Government had the will, it could utilise to strike a reasonable bargain. There are funds allocated within the budget itself for wage increases. I am not going to debate the detail of the negotiation. That negotiation is clearly a matter for the Government. What I will exhort them to do, though, is to go to the negotiating table; forget their total ideological antagonism towards the union movement; and sit down and strike a reasonable bargain. Mrs Carnell has continued to portray to the community that to strike such a reasonable bargain will impose a massive burden on the community. I can conclude only that Mrs Carnell either is determined that the community will pay or simply does not understand how to allocate priorities within a budget to get a reasonable outcome.

I would like to conclude by saying that Mrs Carnell has shown absolutely no impulse to resolve the matter; nor has she shown any impulse - and this is very significant - towards real consultation with her own work force or the trade unions that represent them. This morning on the radio Mrs Carnell quite clearly expected the unions to behave as unilaterally as she has in this matter. The fact is that the trade unions could give Mrs Carnell a lesson in consultation. They have chosen, absolutely legitimately, not to override the expressed view of their members. They have chosen to let their members take the decision on the future of - a very small number, I might say - their bans. Mrs Carnell, in stark contrast, has behaved in a completely ill-advised fashion and without any support whatsoever from either the Industrial Relations Commission or her own colleagues. We have heard nothing from the Independents who support this Government. It has been totally a unilateral effort by Mrs Carnell.

On the other hand, the unions are obliged - and they accept their responsibility - to have real consultation with their membership and to say to their members, "We respect the decision that you made. We now put to you that you should make a different decision in order to allow negotiations to proceed". That is the unions' position today. Mrs Carnell says, "That is not good enough. I want you to ride roughshod over your members, the way I rode roughshod over everybody". They have rejected that, as of course they would. To conclude, I urge the Government and the Independents who support them to accept the seriousness of this situation, find a way forward, sit at the negotiating table and stop this silly stand-off.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

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