Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 653 ..

Mr De Domenico: Tell your mates to lift the bans.

MR BERRY: Even your own mates are starting to raise questions about your handling of the industrial dispute.

Mr De Domenico: No, they are not. They are fine. They are rock solid behind us, like the community is; rock solid behind the Government.

MR BERRY: Me thinketh, Mr De Domenico, you protesteth too much. I do not think they are rock solid behind you; otherwise they would not be coming out and saying in the newspaper, "We have to settle this dispute; it is costing us". That is what the issue is here.

We saw throughout this dispute Mr Walker issuing threatening e-mails to staff, well and truly involved in the politics of this dispute in an unprecedented way. I have never seen, in my history, people like heads of administration in the ACT involving themselves at a personal level in industrial disputes. This was his own war with his own staff. It was Mrs Carnell's war with the unions; it was Mrs Carnell's war with the Trades and Labour Council. Mrs Carnell tried to focus all of her attacks on the Trades and Labour Council and to blame Jeremy Pyner for the high price of fish in Broken Hill and every other thing that was going wrong in the country; but the fact of the matter was that this was a union dispute with the Government and Mrs Carnell decided that she was going to take on the world.

In February the Chief Minister talked about the pay rise being extended and increased, but I see that she also threatened to cut the pay increase by, I think, one per cent because of the cost of the industrial dispute. What a way to settle an industrial dispute - to threaten to cut the offer!

Mrs Carnell: But it is all right to escalate bans?

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says, "I never put on any bans". Here is one ban she put on. She banned paying them the full amount of her pay increase if they did not agree with her. That is what that boiled down to. I do not know why she has taken a personal position with Mr Haggar from the teachers union. In these press releases I spotted a couple where she personally attacked Mr Haggar because of where he lived.

Mrs Carnell: That was because he said that taxes should go up.

MR BERRY: What has that to do with the industrial dispute? She attacked the secretary of the union because of his address. It is really interesting stuff.

Mr De Domenico: Because he said, "Let's increase taxes for everybody in the ACT". It does not worry him; he lives in New South Wales.

MR BERRY: I hear from the interjections the issue of how much the taxes would go up - another lie; another lie designed to enrage trade unionists. What Mrs Carnell said was that householders' rates would go up by 30 per cent - a lie. It would never have happened. It has never happened in the past.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .