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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1037 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

capital have led to an ongoing erosion of conditions at the bottom end of the labour market, a shift to casualisation is a direct attack on living standards.

One fundamental issue governments across the world need to address is the impact the practices of employers and service purchasers have on the working conditions and living standards of their constituents. It is a far from adequate response for governments to offer reasonable conditions to their own employees, perhaps due to pressure in parliament, and then shift the costs of service delivery via other businesses on to people employed as casuals or in competition with casual employees.

The tendency of governments to shape their practices as a mirror of private business has had a number of unfortunate consequences: increasing pressure on the working poor; an increasing number of working poor; the growing vulnerability of women and marginalised groups; the fragmentation of workplaces, leading to diminished occupational health and safety standards.

Greens across the world would rather see governments, through their own practices and through regulation, be more active in defending and extending the rights and conditions of people at work rather than bowing to the interests of business. Unfortunately, none of these concerns were taken into account in the decision-making process government has followed in making the decision to contract other businesses for ACT Housing.

I remind members that on a global scale we have negotiated the General Agreement on Trade in Services. This is entirely consistent with the Australian government's approach to that agreement, which is that there should be absolute trade in services. The very notion of public services is not to be supported and is seen as a barrier to trade. The Liberal government here may not be aware of that. I do not know how much they engage in debate with their federal colleagues about these issues, but if they care to look at the international discussion they will see that that is the bottom line for GATS.

I think I heard Mr Humphries say there may be some areas where he did not think competition was appropriate. I heard Mr Howard say last week that he was pulling back a bit from competition policy, although when I searched for detail of in exactly what area he thought it was appropriate to pull back from there was none. This is obviously because he is concerned about the general reaction in the Australian community to this obsession with competition and market principles. There might be electoral consequences for not starting to acknowledge that this may not be the most fantastic thing after all. Of course, One Nation are picking up in a big way on this issue as well and are the main threat to the Liberals and the conservatives.

What we have in this debate today is a mirror of international discussion but on a local level. People are raising concerns about governments taking decisions on least cost. The government is trying to put it as a quality of services issue, but their own media has said that it is about the costs of providing services in a public service scenario.

The way the government tries to separate itself from the real consequences of this and not engage in discussion about it is very concerning, particularly from a government that claims to be interested in social capital.

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