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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2095 ..

Schedule 1 - Appropriations

Part 9 - Department of Business, the Arts, Sport and Tourism

Proposed expenditure - Regulatory Reform, Industrial Relations and Tourism, $9,878,700 (comprising net cost of outputs, $9,878,700)

MR BERRY (3.35): Mr Speaker, this represents the final year in Mrs Carnell's much vaunted three-year budget, which was issued with much fanfare in 1995. I want to talk about some industrial relations issues. We should start at the beginning. Nobody in this house will forget the confrontation with the trade union movement in the ACT which was generated by the Carnell-led Liberal Government. It was an ideological battle with the unions, and it was one that cost the Territory - depending on whose estimate you listen to - somewhere between $3m and $5m. But the cost was high. Mr Speaker, during the course of the dispute, I think Mrs Carnell was saying that the cost of the dispute was $5m. When Mrs Carnell was arguing her claim that it was an outrageous dispute, she argued that it was about $5m. After the dispute was over, I think the figure came back to about $3m. So, it seems that the figures that are used in these public relations exercises are fairly flexible. I raise that issue because it shows the lengths that this Chief Minister will go to to put a spin on a particular issue. She will say anything that comes into her head.

Mr Speaker, with the levels that the dispute developed to, that approach was demonstrated to be totally devoid of any commonsense. This place was picketed, as a result of the Government's antagonistic approach to unions. Public servants, teachers and other ACT Government Service workers were threatened with lockouts. The threats were transmitted regularly to each workplace so that Mrs Carnell could have her way in her dispute with the unions. In effect, it turned into Mrs Carnell's gain - a monstrous public relations exercise which did a great deal of damage to the possibility of good relationships between unions, union members and this Assembly. It could not be regarded in any other way.

Mr Speaker, that dispute went on and on, incessantly. As I have already mentioned, it resulted in some cost to the Territory. But the costs to industrial relations from those sorts of disputes can be ongoing. So far as this Assembly is concerned, I am sure that they will have an effect the next time a government which is born of this Assembly attempts to negotiate with unions. Labor's relationship with the union movement is a good one, for good and natural reasons; but it still comes down to the question that the government which is born of this Assembly is the government which will, in future, have to negotiate with unions. I think a great deal of damage was done to the possible future industrial relations between workers, industrial organisations and this Assembly.

I want to say also that Mrs Carnell's preferred Prime Minister, who has done so much damage here in the Australian Capital Territory, has embarked on an ideological war with working-class people with the implementation of the Federal industrial relations legislation. That is about weakening workers and ensuring that their wages and working conditions overall are driven down. Of course, in these circumstances, the strong survive; but it is the not so industrially strong, particularly women and young people, that are affected badly by this sort of approach. But that is the ideology of those opposite.

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