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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1690 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

advertised as a free festival. I have said in the past that when people arrive here in a 40-seater bus the first thing they are going to have to find is $400 to get into the place. That will come as a bit of a surprise, I will bet. I wonder whether they will want to come back next time. They are the issues. Floriade was another debacle. I make a general point again. If they are the sorts of things that we can find out, what other things of a similar nature are occurring? Somebody mentioned the flightless bird, the Feel the Power bird. I will come to that again in a minute.

I want to talk briefly about redundancies. They will be debated later on, but it is important to deal with them in the context of this report. The Government said:

The Carnell Government has always made it clear the Liberals will allow redundancies only if the workload goes. They have never supported job loss alone. The current enterprise agreements -

it is important that I underscore this -

requires union agreement to anything other than voluntary redundancies and we propose to put that same clause in the new agreements.

The government response referred to a media release dated 26 August which I have in my hand. This is disingenuous. I will read to you some of the things that the Chief Minister says in her press release:

If agencies are happy to negotiate the continuation of the current provision in some agreements, which requires the agreement of unions before utilising the involuntary redundancy provisions of the RRR Award, then that is fine.

Remember the two words "if agencies", and remember what the Chief Minister said in her promise:

The current enterprise agreements requires union agreement to anything other than voluntary redundancies and we propose to put that same clause in the new arrangements.

In fact, it is very clear that they intend to breach it because of the requirement that agencies have to be happy. The press release continues:

If the negotiated outcomes settle on revised access to the RRR Award, which might include the involuntary provision, then that is fine as well, because it will only be achieved by agreement.

That is another breach, because clearly the Chief Minister is not going to implement the election promise which was proposed before the election. That is treachery, in my book. The press release goes on to say:

Similarly, if the parties agree to different processes or time frames for steps under the RRR Award, then that is fine too.

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