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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1047 ..

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order, Mr Berry. The Chief Minister is explaining the situation, and I have no doubt that she will answer your questions.

MRS CARNELL: That is exactly what I am doing. Mr Berry made some comments about us hiring out-of-town contractors. City and Country won the job for the tower block and Sylvia Curley House through a public tender process. The facts of the matter are that it has five drivers who are CFMEU members. In addition, it has engaged five ACT employees, who have worked previously on the site and who are also members of the CFMEU. So we have a situation where, as I understand it, they have 11 employees. Five came with the company from Newcastle. This is a very large number of people! They employed five locally and one from Queanbeyan. So it is 6 : 5 at the moment. So much for thousands of people or lots of jobs being lost to the ACT. The fact is that the company brought five people with them, and employed five here and one in Queanbeyan, I am told.

Mr Berry: What about the trucks?

MRS CARNELL: We do not actually have a jobs-for-trucks program.

Mr Humphries: Only if it is a union truck. It has to belong to the union; that is okay.

Mr Berry: Other trucks are lying idle in this town, Mr Humphries, in case you have not noticed.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I do not mind if trucks are lying idle. I mind if people do not have jobs. Funny about that! This is nothing short of attempted blackmail and shows contempt for the people of Canberra and employees of the contractor involved, that is, City and Country, Newcastle. The TWU is clearly ignoring the fact that this project is providing employment opportunities over the long term for Canberra residents.

On the basis that the unions involved have not requested, to my knowledge, anything from me on this - at this stage I have no requests, demands or anything else from the unions - but we have the TWU, which is not the same union as the CFMEU, picketing the site for who knows what reason, you have to assume that this is a dispute between two unions. Last time I looked into this, disputes between two unions were demarcation disputes. This sort of blackmail is simply unacceptable, and it is certainly unacceptable to have Mr Berry, as Deputy Leader of the Opposition, down there hyping them up, as I understand it. I cannot believe that that was the case; that must have been a vicious rumour.

Resorting to this sort of old-fashioned and completely out of date industrial tactic is nothing more, in my view, than attempting to get union membership, trying to get people to join different unions. If that is the case, it comes back to a demarcation dispute, again. If this is not a demarcation dispute, if it is just a dispute between two unions that somehow is not a demarcation dispute - I have absolutely no idea what it is - I will withdraw the statement that it is a demarcation dispute. I do not know what else a dispute between two unions is. Mr Kaine, you know about industrial relations. Is there another way you could put this? You are the Minister.

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