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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (20 October) . . Page.. 3398 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, we can argue about whether we are already adopting a process of trying to be consistent across government. We believe that we are, at least, trying to be consistent. The problem with the motion is the words that are already there. He is not taking any words out, and I submit that we are not going to get anywhere by supporting the motion's words as they now appear.

There are two possible interpretations which now emerge from the situation we are faced with here.

Mr Berry: Tell us about core duties. You can speak again too, Michael.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

MR HUMPHRIES: Could I have a little bit of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. Either it is all right to pay some of the workers involved in industrial action some of the time but not other times, or it is illegal to pay workers involved in industrial action at any time under the terms of the Workplace Relations Act. The third interpretation, that the Workplace Relations Act has no application here, I think we have all ruled out. It does not apply. So there are two possible interpretations. Either we can pay sometimes or we cannot pay at all.

Mr Berry: Sometimes.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is what I said. So the question in this debate is: "In which direction are we tending?". I admit that the legal advice that I tabled earlier today does depend on what is industrial action, so that is a threshold question before we can rely on that advice. Is it industrial action or is it not? That question about industrial action is an issue which is at the core of the debate, but we are tending, in this debate, to suggest - and Mr Berry seemed to be suggesting this - that there is a point at which you are in breach of the law if you pay your workers in the course of an industrial dispute.

We have been urged to be cautious about these things and to exercise greater care about these matters. Yet Mr Berry is saying, when there is a serious doubt about this matter, when we really do not know and we have not got any advice about the matter which is clear, that we should press on and make the payments almost recklessly, whether or not that might breach the law.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that language is totally inconsistent with what has been said to the Government on earlier occasions. It just is not consistent. It is hypocritical in the extreme to censure the Government for inadvertently breaking the Financial Management Act, an Act which contained no penalties, financial or otherwise, and yet say it is all right for the Government to do its best to bend the law and see whether we can go in under the radar in respect of the Workplace Relations Act.

What Mr Berry has established in this debate is that the Government may have come a cropper with respect to the law. He may have made a case for saying that some of the payments the Government has made in respect of other industrial disputes which could be classified as falling under the terms of section 187AA of the Workplace Relations Act were illegal. I do not think Mr Berry has established that it is okay to pay

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