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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 646 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

For Mrs Carnell, facts are not important. Mrs Carnell does not care that the dispute is not resolved. She does not care, just as long as she is getting some good headlines. Mrs Carnell boasted on ABC radio recently that it was a good thing that not all the unions had signed up because the longer it took the unions to sign up, the more money she would save, which would all go to pay for the cost that she has imposed on the community from this dispute. That is a fact, Mr Speaker. She would rather have people not getting a pay rise so that she can save the money to make up for the costs that she has imposed on this community from this dispute.

Perhaps most seriously, Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell has portrayed in this dispute her duplicity, her double standards. Since industrial action began, Mr Speaker, she has consistently refused to deal with the Trades and Labor Council, arguing all the time that she could not talk to anybody while there were bans in place; but the first two unions that she offered individual offers to were the two unions that had those bans in place and that she said she could not talk to.

Mrs Carnell: That is because they came to see me. They came to see us.

MR WHITECROSS: No, that is not true, Mrs Carnell. You went to see them. Again and again she went into the Industrial Relations Commission and argued that it would be wrong to talk; yet talk she did. She said that it would be wrong to talk to unions that had bans in place, but offer them she did. Mrs Carnell complained only last month in this place that the use of protected industrial action - something which is provided for in the Industrial Relations Act and is part of the enterprise bargaining process - meant that she could not appeal to the umpire, to the Industrial Relations Commission. But what happened every time she did go to the Industrial Relations Commission? She lost. She lost 11 times straight. The unions twice went to the Industrial Relations Commission to ask her to talk to them.

Members interjected.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Wood): Order! There is too much interjection.

MR WHITECROSS: The unions twice went to the commission and asked it to tell Mrs Carnell to come and talk to them, but Mrs Carnell still would not talk to them. The unions got the commission to ask Mrs Carnell to conciliate. Mrs Carnell tried every procedural trick in the book to avoid having to go to conciliation. What did Commissioner Holmes have to say about Mrs Carnell's approach to this dispute? Commissioner Holmes said, "It is with great restraint" - and great restraint it must have been - "that I am drawn to conclude that, put at its mildest, Mrs Carnell's actions can only be adjudged as a gross discourtesy to the other parties to the proceedings and to the commission". Commissioner Holmes described Mrs Carnell's approach as a gross discourtesy. I would have thought that words like "hypocritical" and "two-faced" spring to mind. I would have thought that a phrase like - - -

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