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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 656 ..

MR DE (continuing):

remember him, the now Opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs or something - were briefed extensively and frequently on the strategy that the TLC was going to pursue in its campaign of protected industrial action.

Mr Berry: The next minute you will be saying that we are close colleagues.

MR DE DOMENICO: Let Mr Berry deny that in this place. Let Mr Berry stand up in this place and deny that. There is dead silence. In other words, Mr Speaker, Mr Berry was intimately involved in the strategy and the coordination of the union campaign. There is no doubt about that. When the Trades and Labour Council's combined front collapsed in a heap, what did Mr Berry attempt to do, Mr Speaker? Did he support the Government for reaching agreement with 12 out of 16 unions? No. What did he do? He engaged in a desperate attempt to shore up individual unions from breaking away from the TLC, urging them to stay united and not deal with the Government separately. This is Mr Berry.

As Mr Berry knows, Mr Speaker, this exercise was like sticking his finger in the hole in the wall of the dyke as the water came gushing through; but he attempted, all the same, to bind the unions together under the TLC umbrella. That is the stuff that was done in the Industrial Revolution days, or back in the year when Fidel Castro was first elected. Quite seriously, Mr Speaker, if anyone has deliberately sought to prolong this dispute, both overtly and covertly, it is the former fireman himself who can take the credit for that. Ironically, Mr Speaker, which was one of the first unions to break away from the TLC? The United Firefighters Union, notwithstanding the fact that they no longer had the magnificent intellectual ability of Mr Berry's industrial relations advice. What did they do within 21/2 minutes? They broke away. They said, "Listen, we will take the money, Kate. You beauty. You little ripper. Forget about what Wayne says; we will take it and run". They did, and then the avalanche started, Mr Speaker.

Let me repeat myself. If anyone has deliberately sought to prolong this dispute, both overtly and covertly, it is the former fireman himself. He ran around the Territory for weeks with a scare campaign that the Government was moments away from locking out thousands of poor, unsuspecting employees. Mr Berry even went so far as to claim that the Government was going to lock out health workers because of the blow-out in the budget. He went around saying that as well. That is the kind of scaremongering that is Mr Berry's trademark. He specialises in those sorts of scare tactics. Remember this little gem from Mr Berry about the Alliance Government in June 1990, when he said:

It is only a matter of time before a resident of Canberra dies because of this Government's mismanagement of the hospital system.

That is what Mr Berry said, Mr Speaker. For what? He was talking about political headlines. That is what Mr Berry said. He used that sort of scare campaign, going lower than a snake's belly, just to try to grab a political headline.

All along in this dispute Mr Berry has sought to divide, to spread rumours, to misrepresent the true position of the Government and individual unions, and to ensure that Canberrans suffer for as long as it takes to fulfil his political objectives. That is what Mr Berry is all about. His aim throughout this dispute has been none other than to bring

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