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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1937 ..

Mr Moore: Eighty.

MR HUMPHRIES: I beg your pardon; it was 80 teachers. Now he is joining forces to talk about the terrible damage to class sizes by having to accept this claim and so on. Mr Speaker, if those opposite in the Labor Party are serious about this matter, let them tell us what they would do in this position.

Ms McRae: You will find out in November.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes. They will not tell us now. They will not tell the community now. Let them tell the community how they would solve this problem. Their right to come into this place and say, "We condemn the Government; we will force the Government to change its education policy by rejecting it; we will do this, that and the other because we are not satisfied with their approach", fails to offer an alternative to people, which they are entitled to have. Mr Speaker, if Mr Moore carries through his threat in this place to vote down the Government's education budget and if it has the effect of tipping out this minority Liberal Government in favour of a minority Labor government, people are entitled to know exactly what this alternative government is going to do about the education problem, and about the claim of the Australian Education Union in particular, before it comes into office.

Mr Speaker, if that is an issue - and Mr Moore has made it an issue right now - why can we not see now what their position is on this subject? My stomach nearly turned when Mr Berry rocked down here for his brief appearance in this debate and told us that the solution to the problem was that we had to produce a more conciliatory environment in which to be conducting these negotiations. Mr Berry telling this Assembly that we need a more conciliatory environment! Perhaps the environment he generated for the former Fire Commissioner was the sort of conciliatory environment he was talking about.

Mr Speaker, I have a few helpful clippings here. One of them is from the Canberra Times. The subheadline is "ACT Government `on thin ice' over enterprise agreement". You might think that is a comment about the present or recent industrial problems of the present ACT Government. No. The main heading is "Berry not helpful: union". It quotes the then TLC acting secretary, Maureen Sheehan, talking about how unhelpful the discussions with Mr Berry had been as Minister for Industrial Relations; how the unions were "really angry" and "felt a meeting with Industrial Relations Minister Wayne Berry yesterday had `gone backwards' ". The article reads:

According to Ms Sheehan, Mr Berry had said pay increases must be paid for out of savings in work practices.

Does that sound familiar - savings in work practices? It continues:

He had wanted these savings quantified. But Ms Sheehan said the unions could not put dollar-value on all the productivity savings.

There had been no provisions made in the Budget for the wage increases, she said.

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