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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2323 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

been lost because of the fundamentalist zeal that this government has shown for outsourcing and privatisation?

This attitude also demonstrates that the government wants to discard its responsibility for the look of the Australian Capital Territory. The majority of complaints that I receive in my office are about the look of the place, and how it is slipping backwards all the time. I know of many instances where just a failure to keep an eye on things has allowed many important urban issues to escape the notice of government, that is, if it has the will to fix them in the first place.

I remember reporting an incident to this minister-this is probably a positive comment about the minister. A motorcyclist fell off his machine right near my house and seriously injured himself, and I think the lack of proper road signage and road furniture probably contributed to the incident. Notwithstanding that, when the matter was raised with the minister, within a matter of days, or even weeks, it was fixed. I don't think it was fixed because the government wanted to, because I think they realised how bad the condition of the area was. The government said, "It's on the program anyway", but frankly that was a little bit hard to believe.

In any event, the minister responded quickly, but what I complained about is how the road signage and furniture got into such a sorry state before it was fixed, and this goes to the issue of the lack of corporate memory and corporate commitment which has resulted from this fundamentalist zeal to privatise those important government services. That is not surprising given the background of the minister, and his association with Mr Reith and the government's rusted-on connection to the Howard government. That is their particular bent as well.

During the Estimates Committee process, the issue of contract workers involved in Urban Services work, and privatisation, and all those sorts of things was raised. It was a great shock to me to learn that, while the government is still committed to unloading its workforce in Urban Services-and particularly in those blue-collar areas-about 100 have been contracted out to labour hire companies. We have people being hired in, on a daily basis, for labour hire companies, and we are ditching workers through our draconian departure lounges set up by this minister.

People will remember the departure lounges, which we used to get rid of public servants. Their jobs would be discontinued, they would be sent off to the departure lounge, all the doors would shut behind them, and they would be gradually shoved out of a job. They call it humane. There was nothing humane about it: it was a cruel approach to dealing with their workforce. So hungry were they to implement their fundamentalist ideology on privatising their workforce, that the government created these disgraceful departure lounges, and now we have a situation where about 100 workers have been hired in from labour hire companies.

Of course, this is a great advantage to the government because it can hire people whose workers compensation payments would be lower in the private sector than they would be if these workers were contributing to Comcare, as people have to do if they are employed directly. They might also have better wages and working conditions if they were employed directly. But, of course, labour hire workers can be ditched at any time. I asked, "What do you do if one of your labour hire workers is injured and cannot come

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