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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1311 ..

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (4.28): Mr Speaker, the Government seem determined to talk Mr Moore's wonderful report on Acton-Kingston into oblivion by all jumping to speak in this debate. After three speakers from the Government, I think I should jump as well.

It is interesting that Mrs Carnell is so worried about the failure of employers to take on new workers and blames the unfair dismissal laws for that. Of course, as we all know, Mrs Carnell has shown great leadership on this issue by having an employment freeze of her own! Far from being in the business of encouraging employers to take people on, Mrs Carnell, by putting on a wage freeze, is leading the charge not to take people on and in the process is reducing the size of the ACT work force and contributing to the overall lack of activity in the ACT economy, which is why small businesses do not feel very enthusiastic about employing people in the ACT. Mrs Carnell also campaigned for the election of the Howard Government, a government which has also been threatening to reduce the work force in the ACT, giving small business yet further reasons not to employ people. If I were Mrs Carnell, I would not be crowing about what a great job the Liberal Government is doing in making it attractive for people to employ extra workers. The Liberal Government is doing everything possible to make it less attractive for people in this town to employ people.

Mrs Carnell's speech, Mr Humphries's speech and Mr De Domenico's speech make it clear who the ideologues are in the industrial relations debate. This is something that everybody in the community knows: The ideologues in the industrial relations debate are the conservatives. The ideologues in the industrial relations debate are the Liberal Party. The pragmatists in this debate are the Labor Party. They are the ones who understand the practical realities of industrial relations; the Liberals are the ones who take the ideological position. It is the Liberals who are complaining all the time that it costs too much to employ people. It is the Liberals who are complaining all the time that you should be able to sack people whenever you want and that workers should not have any rights in this respect. It is the Liberals who, when they are negotiating with their own work force, want them to trade off all their hard-earned conditions for a bit of a pay rise. These are the agendas of the Liberal Party.

It is the Liberal Party that wants the Industrial Relations Commission taken out of the equation so that workers cannot appeal to the umpire and say, "We want an award increase but they will not give us one", and have the Industrial Relations Commission say, "You have a reasonable case. We will give you one". The Liberals want to turn it into an argument between the employer and the employees, because they are confident that in that argument the employer will have more power than the employees and the employees will end up with lower rates of pay. That is the Liberals' agenda, and that is why the Liberals want to take the umpire out of the equation. It is quite ironic that Mrs Carnell should be complaining - - -

Mrs Carnell: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I think it is important that the Leader of the Opposition make it clear to this Assembly where he got the information about the Industrial Relations Commission being taken out of the equation. It would be unfortunate if he were misleading this place, Mr Speaker.

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