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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1987 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

We want them to come here because this is a good city for them to be in. That, I think, is a very salient lesson for us to learn. It is certainly the point that my leader, Andrew Whitecross, has put forward very clearly as Labor Party policy. I think it is a very salient lesson that we can learn from Christchurch.

Mr Speaker, the last point I want to make is a somewhat more negative one, and that is in relation to what has also made Christchurch competitive. What has made Christchurch competitive, unfortunately, is a distinct lowering of labour costs. In New Zealand they have introduced new industrial relations legislation. It has been in place for, I think, six or seven years, and wages have declined for people who are poorly organised, people who work in positions where they can be easily replaced, and people who do not have highly desirable skills, such as people who work in supermarkets and the hospitality industry. Where skills are relatively easily replaceable you find that the wages in those industries are significantly lower, very low.

It is different, though, in industries where employees have highly desirable and highly educated skills. An example that we were shown, as Mr Hird has pointed out, was an engineering company where there were fitters and turners. Fitters and turners were working on parts for the Anzac ship project. They were very highly skilled individuals and very highly organised. Their union represented them and they got very good wages and conditions. They were organised, but they had the skills desired by their employer. The employer wanted to keep them.

The point I want to make here is that we have to strike a balance between making our city effective as a centre for businesses to come to and protecting the wages and conditions of the people who work in those businesses. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of Christchurch is that in many businesses people are being employed on lower wages than they were perhaps a decade ago. That is something that we need to take heed of. It is not an issue that affects us directly here in Canberra, but it is a national issue that we all should be conscious of.

Mr Speaker, in summing up I would like to thank particularly the committee secretary, Beth Irvin, for all her hard work and the assistance she gave to me and to Mr Hird on our visit to Christchurch. We had a very busy schedule, as members would see in the statement that Mr Hird has tabled. I counted 23 different meetings in the four days that we were there. That is quite a few meetings each day. By the end of it your brain tends to get a little overloaded, but I think we both found that schedule very interesting. It would not have been possible without assistance and without the great energy that Beth Irvin demonstrated, and I would like to thank her on behalf of the committee. I would also like to thank Mr Hird for his chairmanship of the committee while we were in New Zealand. I commend the statement to the Assembly.

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