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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1826 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

My recollection of that is that they were fully supplemented. Other departments did not get fully supplemented. I see that the police are fully supplemented. We now know that the teachers will be fully supplemented. There is an industrial disruption looming at the CIT because non-teacher members who work at the CIT have not got a similar pay offer. They are going to have to fight for theirs, and good luck to them.

The nurses were forced to accept the shoddy deal which the government wanted them to take to avoid giving them a real pay rise. That has now evaporated because of the federal changes to fringe benefits payments and the favourable tax position that the public hospital has found itself in. Now that that has evaporated, the nurses have got a problem with their pay rise. So overall we have got this approach to industrial relations and in particular to pay rises, which is just chaotic.

The fire fighters have not received the pay rise they have been pursuing because they have been put in the same position as the teachers found themselves-that is, the rise has got to come out of fire services. So if fire fighters want a pay rise, they have got to reduce services and that means lives and property will be threatened. But this government does not seem to be concerned about that. It is even less concerned when it takes pay rises for itself-pay rises which, incidentally, are based on comparative wage justice in the other states. Yet it ignores the genuine and proper pay claims of workers within the ACT public service. This is an episode that is going to be left for future governments to deal with because it will not go away. The inequities that are being entrenched in our public service, our ACT government workforce, are a difficulty which a future government will have to deal with because this government just has not got the wherewithal to deal with the issue.

I have briefly touched on these issues in dealing with a few portfolio areas that I am familiar with in relation to the budget. I will have more to say when we deal with and absolutely shred this budget throughout the estimates process. It is, as has been said, a good time to be Treasurer. There is no doubt that windfalls have assisted this Treasurer. As my leader has said, much of the success of this government has been built on the pain and suffering of others in the past.

It is a fortunate time for the ACT. It is not good management to take one's community of citizens through a painful period and force them to suffer just to demonstrate that in some way you get the tick as an economic manager and you can be hardnosed. What you have got to do is find a balance. Throughout the cycle this government has not found it. (Extension of time granted.) What it has been able to do because of this fortuitous windfall is have a great splurge and then try to paint itself as having some sort of capacity to deliver a socially just outcome for the community. Well, ask the community who have had to put up with the government over the last five years. They will not agree with you and neither will the community that have seen this budget now.

Mr Stefaniak: They voted for us last time.

MR BERRY: Somebody said, "They voted us in last time." No, they did not. This Assembly voted you in last time, not the community. This government still has got a lot to learn and inventing a package of social capital will not convince anybody.

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