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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 648 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

pay increases that were not in the budget - increases to teachers and to nurses that they did not bother budgeting for. They just put them in there and hoped like hell that somebody would pay for them in the end. The only people who can pay for wage increases, no matter how justified they are, are the ACT community, and we are not in the business of allowing wage increases and reaching agreements that Canberrans simply cannot afford.

The level of misinformation that has come forward the whole way through this dispute is simply unacceptable. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, those opposite have supported the whole approach of a centralised agreement all the way through - no necessary productivity, no requirement for productivity as part of these agreements. What has the Government said? The Government has said that there is this much in the budget. There is 3.9 per cent over the term of the agreement. We have been willing to put into that budget-funded area the 0.8 per cent that we have saved from senior executive salaries, a 1.1 per cent element for whole-of-government efficiencies as incentives to achieve reform in a number of areas, like award reform, triple R, streamlining, workers compensation and so on; and on top of that all that we are asking for is that productivity be achieved. That is not such a dramatic prospect. In fact, it is exactly the approach the former Federal Labor Government took. Mr Whitecross has made it clear time and time again that enterprise bargaining is about productivity, about actually achieving productivity. Unfortunately, that was not exactly the view that Jeremy Pyner took. His view was, and I quote again, "9 per cent fully budget supplemented over 18 months".

What we need now, after listening to the new Leader of the Opposition, is some other bipartisan approach. Mr Whitecross said quite simply that he supported the view that productivity should be part of this agreement and productivity should be actually delivered. So why do we not get an agreement from those opposite to go down the path of arbitration? If we really want an outcome that we can all live with and that is properly determined by an independent person, let us go to arbitration. Unfortunately, the Government cannot do that, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. The Government cannot go to arbitration unless we have agreement from the unions that are outstanding.

Mr Berry: That is not true either.

MRS CARNELL: That is true.

Mr Berry: That is not true.

MRS CARNELL: I am sorry, Mr Berry; it is true. Mr Whitecross used the word "mismanagement". It is difficult to judge Mr Whitecross's own management skills because right at this stage no-one in Canberra knows who Mr Whitecross is, let alone whether he has any management approach. Up until this stage I expect we have no management approach from Mr Whitecross, and certainly today's MPI has not been a very good start.

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