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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 740 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Why are you not doing it, if you believe in it?

Mr Berry: I am doing it.

MR HUMPHRIES: You are only doing it as far as forestry workers are concerned, people who fight bushfires. Is it because they came to the Assembly the other day en masse that you are taking up their cause? Are the other people who go to the career assistance unit from time to time and get redundancies people you do not care about because they are not here in large numbers and you cannot exploit them for the purposes of the coming election? Is that why the motion does not refer to them, Mr Berry?

The fact is that you are concerned about this issue today because there is an election coming up and you want to make sure that you grandstand on these workers whereas you were quite happy just a few years ago when in office to put 17 million bucks into making redundant workers in the ACT public service. You were happy to put thousands of workers out of employment in the ACT back in the days of the Follett government. Apparently that is not good enough any more.

Mr Speaker, let me say on behalf of the government that we will do our very best to make sure that every worker in ACT Forests is provided with a job or is able to take a redundancy which they willingly and voluntarily accept. Despite what Mr Berry says, the packages being offered to these workers are not inconsiderable. We needed to make them considerable packages in order to be able to get people to take them up. There is no point in offering them if they are not going to be taken up, and I am confident that many workers will do so. But let us not get confused by the bleating of those opposite who pretend to be concerned about the position of workers in this community, but in office demonstrate quite the opposite level of concern.

MR OSBORNE (11.17): I must admit to being a little disappointed with the Chief Minister's attitude towards some of the things that Mr Berry had to say about the forestry workers. At times I have criticised Mr Berry about some things, but to accuse him of not being a strong advocate for workers is far from the truth. You can say lots of things about him, but that is not something that you could say.

A question that has nagged me for many years has been answered today. I have always wondered where Mr Kaine developed his skill with the axe in this place, and I am pleased that he stood up and answered that question for us today.

Mr Speaker, this motion is not about restructuring the industry. It is not about forcing the government to retain the 42 workers within that group. This motion is just about requiring the government to find those people a job. I will be supporting it. I think that there would be widespread agreement in here, obviously at different levels, that ACT Forests is in need of improvement. I have looked at the material that was put out by the government, with some questions and answers, on the need for change. Question No 5 asks how ACT Forests came to be in the present position. It is very clear from reading that paragraph that the first point was the lack of plantings in the late 1960s, combined with overcutting in the 1980s. That was obviously a bad decision on the part of the bosses, not the workers.

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