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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (25 February) . . Page.. 371 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

70 per cent female; hotels, clubs and boarding establishments, 60 per cent female; caretakers, cleaners and lift drivers, 70 per cent female; and if they have to work on the day they will probably get penalty rates anyway. This is another condition they want to take away from them.

Mrs Carnell supports the gross cynicism of the employers' move in this matter, which is exemplified by the fact that the first affected amongst the awards they have attacked have been the lowest paid and the ones least able to defend themselves.

Mr Whitecross: Least able to strike a blow.

MR BERRY: That is right. The ones who are industrially weak are the first ones they try to get stuck into. It is a military plan; it is the way these people attack workers' wages and conditions. Notwithstanding all of that, if the move of the employers is allowed to persist - and this Bill will prevent it - the holiday will come under attack on a wider front and we will see a precedent for an attack on the twelfth holiday enjoyed by public sector workers in the Christmas-New Year period.

Mr Speaker, none of us was elected to do any of this. If some of us had it in the back of our minds at the last election, they kept it pretty quiet. This Government, headed by this brazen and arrogant Chief Minister, would stand back and see these low-paid workers who are not in a strong industrial position disadvantaged by a group of employers, who would rip off the conditions of workers without any consideration of the effect of their actions. They just do not care. Already, thousands of employees are affected by this deliberate and mean-spirited attempt to remove a longstanding entitlement to next Monday's union picnic day. Mr Speaker, there is 58 years of history behind this. It is part of our social structure in the industrial area.

Mrs Carnell: We need more jobs, not more holidays.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says that we do not need more holidays. I am prepared to go along with her. But we do not need less. That is the point I am making. We do not need less, and we do not need to join with employers and get stuck into the weakest first. Mrs Carnell is showing herself up as a greedy small business person who is interested only in the bottom line and not in the social interests of her work force.

The timing of this was not my choice, but it is the responsibility of the Assembly to protect constituents from an unfair attack on their conditions wherever possible. If this Assembly does not act decisively this week, thousands of workers will lose their entitlement to next Monday's picnic day.

Mr Kaine: They have already lost it. The Industrial Relations Commission has said they have lost it.

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries interjects that they have already lost it. The Industrial Relations Commission says they have lost it.

Mr Humphries: No, I did not. Mr Kaine said that.

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