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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (20 October) . . Page.. 3347 ..

Mr Stefaniak: One (a).

MR SPEAKER: Order, please! You will have your chance, Mr Stefaniak, to reply to Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: That is in relation to orders that a court may make. But that is only on the intervention of---

Mr Stefaniak: In relation to contravention of 187AA and AB, Wayne.

MR BERRY: That is right. But, Billy, that is only on the intervention of the Minister.

Mr Stefaniak: Or another party, Wayne.

MR BERRY: The Minister is Reith, and Reith never intervened in relation to the wharfies. Why didn't he? Because in the end he wished it would go to hell, go away. He said, "I do not want to hear any more about it; I have been flogged enough by this". The community turned against him on this issue and he knows it. The community needs to understand that what you have done to those bursars is no better than what happened to the wharfies. The only thing that was missing was the balaclava and the dogs. The principle is the same.

Mr Speaker, these workers deserve to be treated compassionately. They deserve to be treated the same way as other workers throughout the ACT government service. There are hundreds of them who have taken industrial action legitimately, and it has been accepted, and they have been paid by the Government. A little bit of consistency, please!

I will tell you why you did not take on other workers. They were in a position to fight back. But you saw the opportunity to impose your ideological, mean-spirited views on these workers, and you knew they were not in a position to belt you up. That is why you took the action. It was gutless. It was mean spirited, and it was intended to hurt. And it did. Mr Speaker, I cannot abide the hypocrisy of people who would claim that to repay these bursars was too difficult, when they are quite happy to pay other workers engaged in the same sort of disruption.

The disruption across government has been legitimate in the pursuit of wages and working conditions, and they have been pursued in a commendable way. There has not been a major disruption of services to the community, but the mean-spirited nature of the Government's approach to wages and working conditions has meant that confrontation has been inevitable. Mr Speaker, it sickens me to read the press releases of our hospital-busting Chief Minister, and to hear her criticise workers who take industrial action, particularly when this action is the same as that taken by many other workers in government employment, and those workers have been paid.

I think it is appalling, and I urge members to support this move to ensure that these bursars get paid. They are out there working in our school system and making sure that conditions for our children are improved. The Government and the department ought to be censured for the delays which led to this position. In the end there has been a survey

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