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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 732 ..

Mr Humphries: Ha, ha!

MR BERRY: You can laugh, Mr Humphries. That shows how much interest you have in what those fellows do. They put their lives at risk. You will not have to do it in here and you would not know about that, so do not laugh at these workers.

Mr Humphries: Mr Smyth knows. Mr Smyth does it as well.

MR BERRY: For Mr Smyth, who so often boasts about his membership of a volunteer bushfire brigade, to ignore the commitment that these people have made to the people of ACT is just extraordinary. I will tell you what: he will not find too many friends amongst his fire fighting colleagues after this, for good reason.

Mr Speaker, one other example was the person who was recognised with a national medal and clasp for 25 years of service to the ACT public service. Those sorts of things just do not fall into your lap. They happen after long and committed service to something that you like doing. For the government to turn its back on such workers at short notice is just beyond comprehension.

I will give an example of what one of these workers will get: five weeks pay in lieu, two weeks pay for each year of service, a $22,000 bonus for having over 30 years of service and a $2,872 pension per annum. How can you do that to them? These people were misled about their ability to contribute to the superannuation scheme that was available to other public servants.

Mr Humphries: By whom?

MR BERRY: By their superiors, Mr Humphries. I understand that there is a matter before the courts in relation to that. Forget that for a moment and forget for a moment those other areas of service, if you are so black-hearted that you can forget them too, and just treat them as human beings. No, that would be something that would be foreign to you because you have become familiar with this foul way of treating workers.

Mr Humphries: Dear, oh dear, Wayne! Where are the violins?

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries still does not recognise it. Mr Speaker, in the last budget this government said that there would be no new funded redundancy programs.

Mr Humphries: That is right, centrally funded.

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries says that that is right. Mr Smyth then tried to hide behind this statement in the budget papers:

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