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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 534 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

the 48 hours seems to be a pretty interesting figure here - to change their rosters, to adjust their staffing, to alter their wages sheets, is true arrogance. If those in this room do not think that is a problem, I can tell you that it is. Certainly, from my experience in retail, just about everybody has weekly or fortnightly rosters. Most of the people we are talking about here have known for weeks now that Monday was not going to be a holiday. How were they supposed to plan for this? What were they supposed to do?

Mr Berry: They should have thought about that before they ran it through the Industrial Relations Commission.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Berry says, "They should have thought about that before they ran it through the Industrial Relations Commission". The Confederation of Industry put a case to the Industrial Relations Commission. It went to a Full Bench, I have to say. A decision was taken. This is the way our system works: You have an umpire. You go to the umpire and put the case. Somebody wins; somebody loses, usually. That was exactly how it was done. I think what is even more amazing here is that Mr Berry stated that he never intended to consult with the business community.

Mr Berry: No, he did not say that.

MRS CARNELL: You say, "He did intend to consult". That is lovely, Mr Berry; because, if you did intend to consult, then how about we put off the Bill and allow you to consult? That would mean you did intend to consult. You have not, so let us put it off until you have done the job you say needs to be done. After the times I have seen those on the crossbenches listening to Mr Berry complain - and we listen to Mr Berry complain all the time - about how the Government has supposedly failed to consult, I ask the members of the crossbenches what they think of this approach.

If we put this Bill through now, we potentially are going to make an extreme problem for an awful lot of small business owners, individual proprietors, people running sandwich shops, little businesses. The Government, unlike the New Labor Party, has worked extremely hard over the past two days to explore the effects that this amendment is likely to have, if passed. Let us look at the legislation itself. On Tuesday, Mr Berry told the Assembly:

The Industrial Relations Commission made it pretty clear that it is the role of this legislature to decide what the public holidays will be.

Yes, there is a role for the Assembly, but not if the commissioner has already ruled on a particular public holiday. That is exactly what happened in this case. Commissioner Larkin ruled that, as far as the ACT is concerned, people can have either Canberra Day or the union picnic day; not both, Mr Berry. They are not my words but Commissioner Larkin's words. The commission did not decide this out of the blue. It took advice from employers and unions and it did make a decision, not in 48 hours, but after looking at all of the information that was put before it.

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