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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2351 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

We see the same for teachers. Good on them, I say. The teachers were perfectly entitled to the wage increase that they received. But why did the education system, the school system, have to go through the pain and suffering of confrontation for so long? In the end nothing really was changed. It seems that there was a need for outside confrontation. Or was it really that the Chief Minister, once involved in it, decided that she could not win on this, she was getting a belting and it was time to give in? I rather suspect that that was the reason. The minister was perfectly happy to maintain the war with the teachers but in the end he was overridden and a decision was made to fully supplement the teachers' pay rise.

Others will say, "Well, look what happened in New South Wales and the other states." Perhaps the reality of the teachers' claim started to sink in. For example, the claim in Queensland was on the verge of being settled or may have been settled at the time; and the claim in New South Wales was on the verge of, or close to, settlement at the time. It was pretty obvious that the wage claims by interstate teachers unions and public school teachers were about to be settled and that the ACT was going to find it pretty hard to withstand the pressure of further industrial disruption within the education system. So they folded.

On that basis you would say, "Well, essentially an element of comparative wage justice applies here." This is an old way of measuring wages in the industrial relations system of this country, and it is not one I have particular trouble with because I am a supporter of equality outcomes for workers wherever they are. I cannot see a reason why workers doing a certain job in one place ought to be paid differently to workers in another place-that is, unless you want to screw them. In any event, this parallelled the approach that was taken by the government in respect of its own wages. Our independent tribunal awarded pay rises of 16 per cent to all members in this place. According to the comments of the tribunal, these rises were all calculated on the basis of comparative wage justice, of what was happening in other places.

Why could not the government have taken at an earlier time the approach that it adopted in the end for teachers? Why did we have to take so long? Why was it that fully supplemented pay rises could be dealt with for politicians in this place but the money could not be found for other important areas of government service? It created a sense of injustice throughout the workforce. There is good reason for raising that sort of level of injustice. There is no question that inequality in the outcomes in the wages system is something that future governments are going to have to cope with.

This issue will emerge again. I can tell you that Labor will give fairer outcomes to government workers than they could expect from this mob opposite under the shackles of the monstrous industrial relation laws that have been created and imposed on the territory by Minister Reith federally and his mates in the Democrats.

The government's other monuments will be left for other people to sort out. My colleague Mr Corbell will deal with the ovals issue a little later. Of course, he is full throttle on that and I am sure he has got a few interesting things to say about the matter.

But this brings me to another matter. We are told that this kind and caring budget is built on social capital. A range of highlights for the Department of Education and Community Services-and provision is made in the budget for some of them-are set out on

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