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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 652 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

I note, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that the Federal Government has engaged him as well to assist them with the development of their industrial relations policy. I suspect that that also will send a message to the trade union movement throughout this country, and it is not a message of cooperation. In December Mrs Carnell achieved the dubious honour of becoming the first public sector employer in the country to threaten to lock out its employees.

This is the Government that is trying to settle an industrial dispute, so Mrs Carnell tells us. She tried to reshape history in her speech in this place today. She tried to avoid all of the controversial headline grabbing exercises that she was involved in in this industrial dispute and tried to turn the responsibility onto the Labor Opposition, which, of course, nobody will be fooled by. Then, in January, the Government started talking about forced redundancies. Bear in mind that workers throughout the Territory are concerned about the future of their jobs. We had a threat of a cut of 3,000 jobs in the first place, and now we have the Government talking about forced redundancies. This was an issue for workers right throughout the dispute. On my understanding, in all of the agreements thus far, the Government has withdrawn from that position, and many of those unions have been able to protect the jobs of their workers for the future. Why on earth would a government allegedly trying to settle a dispute threaten to sack workers? Because they want to keep the dispute going; they want to have their little game and grab a few cheap headlines. Bear in mind that they already had threatened to lock some workers out. In February the Government began attempts to split off some unions by offering striking workers more than the official Government offer.

I turn to some of these press releases which are peppered with those lies I spoke to you about earlier, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. The Government had said that they would not continue negotiations with unions while bans were on. Their press release said, "Bans must be lifted for negotiations to go ahead". All of a sudden, they make an offer to some unions behind the scenes and try to buy them off. That is a really smart tactic, but it is not the sort of tactic that would create a lot of confidence in the people you are negotiating with across the table. This is the Houlihan tactic that we have seen evident in this country on many occasions before. It is a union busting tactic.

People like Mrs Carnell and Mr De Domenico walk around with their chests out after they have issued a few controversial and provocative press releases and say to all of their supporters in the Liberal Party and in other conservative nests around the Territory, "We have done your bidding". I suppose that some of them would say, "You are doing a good job out there too". "But you are not settling the industrial dispute", some would say. People like Ossie Kleinig would say that you are not settling the industrial dispute because you are causing damage to business in this Territory.

Mrs Carnell: That is right. He thought the unions should have withdrawn immediately.

MR BERRY: You caused it. You caused it because you dragged it out. You deliberately provoked this industrial dispute to a point where businesses in this city are being affected by millions of dollars. That was caused by the actions that you have taken.

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