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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 1792 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

industrial relations law, but they are there and you will use them. If the parties were to have that sort of a clause, as you promised before the last election, if you had that in there, a non-union agreement would be subject to the same conditions as a union one. So, do not give me that nonsense.

Ms Carnell: So you will support the amendment?

MR BERRY: I will read it to you again. It does not say the boss and the union. It says:

the parties agree to develop and implement a streamlined process for voluntary redundancies during the life of the agreement. The process of the RRR Award shall apply. Should the processes as outlined at clause 8 of the Award -

which is where compulsory redundancy can arise -

be reached then further action would require the agreement of the parties.

So your amendment is completely unnecessary, but so is your rhetoric. This is not about control of the union movement over the process; this is about fair play for ACT public servants and a better Public Service. I am not interested in your ideological opposition to trade unions. You will say, "Oh, unions are all right as long as they sit there quietly and do nothing".

Mr Smyth: This is simply your ideological support of unions.

MR BERRY: Yes, support of quiet unions and trouble-free unions. They are the sorts of unions she wants, not ones that actively support their workers. Workers in the ACT Public Service will soon work out where they are best represented. They are not best represented by independent agencies appointed by the boss. They are best represented in a collective situation by an organisation which is set up to do that. I go back to that issue again. Do not try on this nonsense about this amendment being necessary to rule the unions out. Do not try it on at all because it is already dealt with in the agreement. Again I repeat: "the parties agree to develop", and so on, and further action at the end of it would require the agreement of the parties.

Let me summarise this, Mr Speaker. The Chief Minister says she does not want to direct agencies. Well, she has done so already because she said in relation to redeployment and redundancy that full application of the triple R award is to apply and that includes the compulsory redundancy provisions. So do not give us that; you have already done it. I have the document and it has been tabled in this place. Secondly, the agreement covers all of the mysteries that you attempt to raise in relation to unions because it is between the parties. The parties are the boss, the worker, the unions and so on. It is covered. There is no need for any more of that.

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