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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3239 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This motion is essentially about two things. The first is supporting decent wages and conditions for workers in the community sector. The second issue is making sure that we at the very least maintain services in the community sector. The Greens support this award, as it goes some way to improving conditions for workers. Organisations already operating on very tight budgets cannot be expected to foot the bill without assistance from government. That is one of the points that need to be made clear in the amendment Mrs Carnell is suggesting to add the words "where appropriate". Some organisations will suffer with the introduction of this award and others will be able to cope with it quite well.

When I was researching this issue, I found a media release of ours from February 1996 urging the Government to develop a strategy to fund the community sector award. There seems to have not been a really clear strategy. It almost seems as if it has been ignored for too long. In the Estimates Committee in 1995, when we questioned the Government about the SACS award, Family Services indicated that organisations may have to restructure services in order to operate within existing funding levels and that this would mean that essential community services from child care to respite facilities and assistance to vulnerable people in their homes could be cut.

The ACT is the only jurisdiction that does not have a social and community sector award. We often hear from this Government how highly it values the community sector and how if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. We are prepared to pay executives big salaries, but at the same time we cannot afford to pay community sector workers a decent wage. Community sector workers often have very stressful working conditions and a great deal of responsibility. Wages are not, in my opinion, commensurate with the level of responsibility of workers in this sector or demands on them.

That is why I am happy to support the first part of this motion, namely, that the Assembly support the introduction of a common rule award for all social and community service workers in the ACT. We will also support the amendment of Mr Berry's asking that the Government support the application before the Industrial Relations Commission. I understand that the commission is considering this matter in a few weeks' time. Obviously, it is not the role of this parliament to pre-empt the outcome, but I am happy to say that I support the introduction of a common rule award.

If a common rule award is introduced, we just cannot ignore this issue. As I mentioned earlier, in 1996 we urged the Government to put together a coordinated strategy to assist the community sector with funding the social and community sector award. The reason we did this is that organisations will be forced to reduce services unless supplementary funding is provided. Finding the money to implement the new award conditions without cutting services is one of the most serious issues facing the community sector, especially if the ACT Government is trying to save money by cost shifting or contracting out services to the non-government sector.

The Greens are very supportive of the community sector delivering services in many areas, but we also recognise that workers in this sector have conditions and wages greatly lower than in private enterprise or the government sector. Government is responsible for making sure these services are properly funded. It is not good enough just to say that the lowest bid wins. Government has recently completed the review of service purchasing

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