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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 1784 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

That is what the Chief Minister said. It is clear. It is plain. The words are simple, understandable and unambiguous. That is what we are debating. The Chief Minister made a promise to the workers of the ACT Public Service. The Chief Minister has now reneged on that promise. That is what this motion is about. It is about the integrity of the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister, going to an election, made a promise, and now, after the event, she decides it is a promise that she does not need to keep.

The Chief Minister's statement was accompanied by the claim, as Mr Berry has indicated, that the pain is over; that there is no need to worry; that there will be no more job losses. We actually have been confronted by the nonsense of the ACT Public Service not being required to forecast the separations, or the job losses, or movements. I am intrigued by this actually. When jobs go they are now movements. Agencies within the ACT Public Service are no longer required to forecast or to give any indication of the job cuts they propose. This is, of course, consistent with the Chief Minister's determination not to keep the promise she made - that the clause in the existing EBAs will be repeated in the new agreements. It is a simple promise. This whole motion is based around a desire to see the Chief Minister keep that promise.

Turning to the inane union bashing that the Chief Minister engaged in in order to try to not face her responsibility to keep her word, she went on and on about the need for all workers within the ACT Public Service to be included in the process. The Chief Minister was very strong on the need for us to reach a negotiated outcome with all workers, but no negotiation can be conducted on the basis of promises made and broken. Any negotiating process relies absolutely on the capacity of the parties coming to the negotiation to take on trust the statements or the promises made by the other side.

Here we have a very clear indication of the Chief Minister's opening gambit on the EBAs, and that is that the new round of EBAs will contain the same clause as the old EBAs contained in relation to voluntary redundancies. Mrs Carnell came to the table with that promise. She has now reneged, she has walked away from it, and she is blaming this on the union. The contrivance is that we are simply insisting that the union, and only the union, be party to the negotiations. That is a position which we would encourage and would support, but, of course, it is not one that we insist on. But we do insist, in this environment, that any member of the ACT Public Service who is not a member of the CPSU really is not paying due regard to their best interests. We certainly believe that. We do not resile from that, and there is no need for us to do so.

The underlying issue here is job insecurity. Over the last few years in Canberra, and perhaps throughout Australia, we have entered an era of incredible job insecurity. It is almost the No. 1 issue for people around Australia, apart from their personal health or the health of their families. They worry about whether or not, on this day next year, they will still be in paid employment. It is the No. 1 worry.

This sort of attitude displayed by the Chief Minister really does go to the core of why so many workers do feel those incredible levels of insecurity. They feel that insecurity because they do not have a feeling that their employers, in this case the ACT Government, extend to them the loyalty that an employer should extend to an employee. They feel that for a number of reasons. They feel that in the first instance because of the unashamed assault which this Government makes on the union and on union membership, as if it is

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