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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2429 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

There are two philosophies. Unions and their members are concerned about their job security and their wages and working conditions. The job of the union is to represent those industrial interests of the workers as well as their professional interests. It is the job of the Government to provide services. You have to weigh up in your head whether the industrial hurly-burly which is going on at this moment is worth the effect that it would be having on services in the workplace. It is all right for Ministers. They have just taken a healthy pay rise. If in relation to your own pay rise you had taken the approach that you have taken with the nurses, it might have been a different matter.

Ms Carnell: We did. We have got nothing, not one dollar, this year.

MR BERRY: In the last pay rise, you got 16 per cent for yourself, Chief Minister. It is not surprising that others in the workplace are concerned about the inability of the Government to provide. This simply arises because the Government made no provision for pay rises in the budget. It said to the workers, "If you want a pay rise you are going to have to cut conditions". That is a philosophical position that you have taken and it is not working out too well. The approach that you have taken in concert with that is to delay, do nothing, sit on your hands, deal with the strongest ones and the ones that are most problematic for you when you have to, not before. That means you are making savings all the time, because you have not given them a pay rise.

That is a tactic that has been quite clear in the course of negotiations and the confrontation throughout the government service in the ACT. Take the firefighters. The firefighters have a fair claim for a pay increase, in my view. The nurses have a fair claim for a pay increase. There will always be argument about the conditions under which pay increases are given. There is no closed door on change. Change is something we all have to deal with. If you see the Chief Minister and the Health Minister essentially taking the Government's argument out publicly in a provocative way, it is certainly not going to settle any industrial disputes. Minister, your job in these circumstances is to try to settle the industrial dispute and get services back to normal, not, as it seems, to have a win over the nurses. That might be a political thing that you want to do, but the political outcome is not important here. The nurses of course want a decent industrial outcome as well.

I want to turn to the approach that the Government has taken in other areas. Take its attack on the school bursars. The attack on the school bursars is an absolutely shameful piece of work. It is a complete and utter adoption of the Reith thuggery which is built into his industrial relations legislation. It is designed to cause confrontation. You do not have to mirror Mr Reith's views in dealing with industrial relations here in the Territory. It is not obligatory. It is not compulsory for you to behave as he does. It is not compulsory for you to deal with working people in the Territory in the way he does. I was going to raise this matter when the Education Minister came back, because his behaviour in relation to school bursars has been absolutely appalling. It has been a jackbooted approach if ever I have seen one. It was about crushing bursars - - -

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry, I would remind you that the motion before the chair relates to nurses, not bursars.

MR BERRY: Indeed, and it is about the confrontation - - -

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