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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 649 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

One of the things that we would like to make clear today is that negotiation is not the same as capitulation, Mr Whitecross. It seems that those opposite believe totally that negotiation is about giving in to the other side. I suppose that Mr Whitecross really does have a few problems here. Why is he in the job? Because the unions supported him into the job. It is that simple. I suppose that it is very difficult for him now to accept that there should not be capitulation. There should be consideration of the Government's various offers and the unions' various claims.

I can guarantee that the Government carefully considered each of the union claims. The first 9 per cent claim in September, the one that would have cost the people of Canberra $27m, came six weeks after the Government's first offer, and then, of course, we had the 14.7 per cent claim. We considered it. We considered it very carefully because the last thing we wanted was a dispute that was costing the ACT taxpayer significantly. We considered that the ACT community did not want to pay up to 30 per cent increases in some charges if we went ahead with that. Our view is, and remains, that the people of Canberra do not want huge tax increases to pay for wage increases that are not traded off against productivity, or not appropriately traded off against productivity. It seems to me that the responsible view that has been taken through this whole industrial dispute has been taken by the Government, not by those opposite, and I believe that the mismanagement has been by those opposite.

It has been very interesting to hear from various unions comments about the involvement of those opposite, particularly Mr Berry. It appears that Mr Berry was often in receipt of press releases from the Trades and Labour Council before the unions who were actually involved, the affiliates, even had copies, according to the various unions, of course. It seems that people like Mr Berry were briefed on the whole industrial dispute, or the tactics, which were not very good, that the Trades and Labour Council was planning to put in place before the dispute or the whole process started. It seems that Mr Berry, or Mr Berry's office, was often on the phone during delegates meetings suggesting approaches. That does not indicate to me any will on the opposite side of this house for a resolution. It seems to me that Mr Berry was trying to hype the whole thing up, to make the people of Canberra hurt worse. I suppose he hoped that at the end of the day we would hurt worse. He is quite happy to use Canberrans in that approach.

I am told categorically that, when the Government determined that an independent facilitator would be a good approach and we approached Des Heaney - not a renowned member of the Liberal Party, I must say - to be that facilitator, Mr Berry was running around suggesting that a former secretary of the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council had been engaged by the Government, attempting to scare people, attempting to make them believe that we were bringing in somebody from outside who did not understand the ACT to facilitate in this thing. Many of the unions made it clear that Mr Berry made those phone calls.

One of the things that we have to realise is that that knock-back, that undermining of having an independent facilitator in at that stage, has cost dearly. As it has turned out, Mr Heaney and his associates have been closely involved in virtually all of the negotiations, or at least a large amount of them after this whole process got back on the rails. We have also had people like Prue Power - not somebody who has links with

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