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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 93 ..

MR SPEAKER: Would you like it to be withdrawn, Mr Berry?

MR BERRY: I would like him to stand up when he addresses the Chair like the rest of us have to.

MR SPEAKER: Mr De Domenico, would you mind standing up and withdrawing it, just for the peace of the Assembly.

MR BERRY: A bit of sullen discontent is not going to help in this case.

Mr De Domenico: Mr Speaker, out of deference to you and to the Chair, I withdraw.

MR BERRY: I am glad that he holds the Chair in high regard.

Then we had the threat of lockouts, which was circulated throughout the Public Service by cc:mail - "This is what is going to happen when you are locked out. You will not be allowed to come back until the boss decides that you should come back". We have the great rates hoax. All these provocative measures have been taken. Mrs Carnell was saying that the unions' pay claim was going to be hypothecated from the rates of the people of the ACT. For the first time in the history of the ACT, it was now incumbent on the Government to put it all in the rates bill. What a lot of rot! None of the people out there believe that sort of hogwash. Those sorts of claims are absolutely ridiculous, and you know it. You know that the rates proportion of our revenue is only 13 per cent, and you know that you have already hit the ratepayers of the ACT 4 per cent for nothing. The value of houses has gone down. Do not talk to us about what the workers would do to rates; just look at what you have done.

Then there was the attempted buy-off of one of the trade unions, which was followed by the more recent events which seemed to have failed. It was made by people who do not understand the business of dealing with the trade union movement. Then we had the outrageous discounting of the Government's pay offer by the cost of the dispute, which Mrs Carnell caused by all this provocation. How on earth would you ever hope to settle an industrial dispute against that background of provocation? But there is more. To use Mrs Carnell's words, the list goes on. She called workers "stupid". Mr De Domenico called them "greedy". Mrs Carnell accused them of thuggery.

Then Mrs Carnell claimed - a false claim, I might add - that workers in the health system were putting patients' lives at risk.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Berry, what does this have to do with payroll deductions?

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, it has a lot to do with it. The attack on payroll deductions is one of the most provocative actions, amongst a list of others, to have been taken by this Government. We have this situation which has developed in relation to payroll deductions because workers disagree with the Government. Mrs Carnell, with her spiteful repertoire of attacks on the union movement, adds this one. She says, "I am going to attack the revenue base of the trade union movement in order that you, as a collective, will find it much harder to fight me. How dare you disagree with me!". That is the message that Mrs Carnell is sending to the unions.

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