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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 967 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

(a) to endanger the life, the personal safety or health, or the welfare, of the population or of part of it; or

So the commission can then terminate the bargaining period. (Extension of time granted.) There are a whole range of other reasons why the bargaining period can be terminated.

The act also sets out what happens if the commission terminates the bargaining period. The bargaining period can be terminated because of industrial action or those other reasons-that is, perhaps the government is not genuinely trying to reach an agreement or perhaps even the nurses are not trying to reach an agreement. According to section 170MX, once it is terminated, as soon as practicable the commission must begin to exercise conciliation powers. And it goes on. Once the commission has exhausted the conciliation powers, arbitration powers are available to the full bench. This leads us into a system where the parties are forced to negotiate because there is a bargaining period. If they do not negotiate in good faith, the bargaining period can be terminated by the commission. There can be conciliation and, according to the legislation I have in front of me, there are arbitration powers, which are only exercised by the full bench. I should mention that the commission also has arbitration powers and award-making powers under those provisions.

So Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, let us put aside all this stuff about scare tactics. The government will be saying, as they always do, that this is about the Labor Party encouraging a walk out of the nurses and that patients will be stranded by the roadside. They will try to suggest that all of those sorts of dark and miserable things will occur as a result of this. Nothing more is going to occur in relation to this than has occurred in dozens upon dozens of bargaining periods and the establishment of agreements throughout the country.

In my view, what is happening is not ideal and I do not think the union would particularly like the very tightly regulated arrangements which have been put in place. But the union tell me that they are prepared to agree with the government to bring forward the nominal expiry date in order that they can go into a proper industrial framework. The reason they say that, of course, is because they want to preserve care and treatment for patients within our hospital system and make sure that the industrial turmoil that has been created by this gap in negotiations can be sorted. It is extremely important that we do not leave this matter hanging. If it is not settled within a framework shortly it will hang for months and months.

Section 127 of the legislation also gives the commission power to order the cessation of industrial action. All of this humbug about industrial action being the outcome is merely that-humbug. The legislation allows industrial action but it also makes sure that the commission has strong powers to limit industrial action. Indeed, workers have an entitlement to defend their workplace conditions by the strongest methods that are available to them. But those methods are certainly restricted very tightly-more tightly than they ever have been-by this legislation. I was involved in industrial relations as an official in the early 1970s and before that as an active unionist, and I cannot remember industrial action ever being more tightly regulated than it is under this legislation.

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