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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2175 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Government to claim that it is open and accountable and then engage in underhanded behaviour behind closed doors, to the point that public servants start to get nervous about what is going on and leak information to the media. As was said in the debate on the motion which censured the Chief Minister for this behaviour, this matter has gone on for far too long in secret. This sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated.

Before the last election, the Chief Minister claimed, "Ah, the pain is over". Subsequent to the election and in the two budgets which have emerged we have found that this in fact has not been the case. Hundreds and hundreds of jobs have gone in a campaign which will impact on the economy in the ACT. At the same time the Chief Minister is trying to be very upbeat about our economy. It is fine to be upbeat. That is a responsible thing for any government to do, but at the same time you have to have a bit of integrity in relation to your promises to the community.

The "Ah, the pain is over" claim was patently inaccurate and misleading. The pain continues. In this budget 450 jobs or so are to go. There is the demoralising spectre of departure lounges being developed in Urban Services in order that the slippery slide to unemployment can be greased so that people who have been identified as potentially surplus to requirements can be placed in the departure lounges and the door shut behind them so they cannot go back to their job if they choose to refuse a redundancy or some other way out of the ACT Public Service.

That is not in keeping with the spirit of the motion that was passed by this place in relation to redundancies. We made it clear in this place that voluntary redundancies were the way forward, not compulsory ones. We made it clear, certainly in the spirit of the motion, that there ought not be some contrived arrangement to force people out of the Public Service. Clearly, the departure lounge prospect is contrary to the promise that the pain was over, and it is certainly contrary, if not to the word, to the spirit of the motion that was passed here in this Assembly. There will be involuntary redundancies if the Chief Minister is allowed to get away with it.

I need also to talk about the industrial relations practices within the Chief Minister's Department. It is now clear that there was an attempt to achieve non-union agreements amongst staff in the Chief Minister's Department and a lot of other departments, who rejected them. Somebody was engaged as a consultant to try to make sure that the non-union agreement happened, and after it failed somebody was engaged to see why it failed. My understanding is that then somebody was engaged to try to make it happen once again. This confusion of consultancies over an issue which could have been resolved by reasonable negotiations with the unions throws open the Chief Minister and her department to severe criticism for unhealthy industrial practices.

We have seen this approach permeating the rest of the ACT Public Service, where there is a myriad of bargaining arrangements being put into place to make it difficult for the unions to negotiate. That is just anti-worker and it is aimed at forcing workers' wages and conditions down, or at least at preventing staff from organising in the strongest way possible to enhance their position. I understand the Liberals' ideological position on this. It has always been the case, and I do not expect that it will change, but to pretend that something else is going on is quite hypocritical.

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