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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1921 ..

Mr Humphries: Is that in Cuba?

MR BERRY: No, it is the heart of Labor Party country in Queensland, Mr Humphries, if you have not heard. When I was in the hotel there a few years ago, much of the feeling about these issues was brought home to me by the proprietor. I was discussing some of the history of the place and he complained about the fact that some of the residents in the town still would not drink in his pub because scabs had drunk there in 1891. These people were not even alive at the time that the scabs had been looked after in the pub, but the feeling in the town was so strong that they still would not have a beer in there. I know that the feeling there might be stronger - - -

Mr Humphries: You were obviously drinking there, weren't you?

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries, had I been fully aware of the situation, I may not have gone in there - but I was not prepared to tip the beer out.

Mr Humphries: You did not realise? We have heard that excuse once already today.

MR BERRY: I was not prepared to tip the beer out. Mr Speaker, it is a serious issue for the workplace. I am not suggesting that the feeling of all teachers is the same, but I raise that by way of an example of how bad things can go in an industrial dispute if you get involved in that sort of nonsense. It does not help. It certainly does not help in the public sector and it certainly would not help in a well-organised union like the Australian Education Union. It would just be disastrous. For the sports business in the ACT, if I can call it that, which I have a particular soft spot for, I think it would be an appalling result because it would affect sport and the attitude to sport of many of our young people because of the conflict that would be created between sport and the education system.

I move on to the way the industrial dispute has been managed generally. Mr Speaker, this is an industrial dispute which should have been over a long time ago, but the Government has mismanaged it from the word go. Mrs Carnell's activities in the early part of the dispute show how you should never approach industrial relations. Mrs Carnell made a star performance at every opportunity, tearing into workers and their unions to ensure that the temperature was elevated. The end result was that the ACT community, according to Mrs Carnell's figures, lost about five million bucks through mismanagement and that a lasting nasty taste has been left in the mouths of trade unionists in public employment here in the Territory.

That flowed over into the teachers dispute. Mr Stefaniak, though not in full flight as Mrs Carnell was, from time to time cannot help himself as he rips into the Australian Education Union publicly, instead of busying himself with trying to find the correct formula to ensure that the industrial dispute in the education system settles down. I know that he will leap up here and say, "Mr Berry, you should go to your colleagues in the Australian Education Union and urge them to take on arbitration". You are kidding yourself. What I am saying to you is that you have cornered yourself in relation to this industrial dispute, to a point where it seems from the outside that you cannot stand to be in the same room as each other.

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