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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 94 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Connolly produced an advice in relation to this matter which makes it clear that this is discriminatory. I quote from the advice:

The Discrimination Act 1991 renders unlawful discrimination on the ground of a list of enumerated attributes, including "membership or non membership of an association or organisation of employers or employees" (s7(1)(ia)) in a range of circumstances, including employment ... For the purposes of the Act, a person discriminates against another person if:

"(a) the person treats or proposes to treat the other person unfavourably because the other person has an attribute referred to in section 7 -

that is, membership of a trade union -

(b) the person imposes or proposes to impose a condition or requirement that has, or is likely to have, the effect of disadvantaging persons because they have an attribute referred to in s7 ...".

Section 7 refers to membership of a trade union. We have the situation where it is clear that this has been a discriminatory act; it has been an industrially provocative act; and it is something that ought not happen.

Mrs Carnell: It is about choice; it is what the CPSU said that they wanted to have.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says "choice"; she says, "This is choice". I am glad that she interjected and used the old Liberal mantra. Chant the mantra and maybe somebody will agree with you. It is not an issue of choice; it is about creating more onerous circumstances for one group of people in relation to trade union membership than apply in relation to, say, membership of a health fund. Mrs Carnell, if you believe so much in choice, why did you not apply the same rules to the membership of a health fund? You did not think of it; it was not topical at the time - "The health funds were not disagreeing with me, so I did not need to punish them". That is the nonsense in the old mantra about choice. How dare you pretend that it was anything other than a spiteful attack on people who disagreed with you! How dare you even pretend it!

We have a situation which has led to industrial unrest in the community and a situation which is being driven by the likes of this attack on payroll deductions for union fees. I have mentioned all of those other factors as well. In the course of the dispute, Mr Walker issued a letter to all staff saying that they had waived the requirement for annual renewal for payroll deductions. He did this on 12 February.

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