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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (2 May) . . Page.. 1385 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The Remuneration Tribunal looked at the wages of executive members and members of this place compared with what went on in other states, with the sorts of duties they carried out, and came up with a figure that they thought was fair, and, in effect, arbitrated it after submissions were called for, and so on.

I was very anxious about that, and I make no apology for the fact that I was embarrassed to some degree because others out there were not getting the sorts of pay rises that my colleagues in this place were getting. They looked to people like me to do something about it.

I take the view that the way you do something about that is to get rid of the government, and that is what I have been working towards, and I think I am getting close. They will get more pay justice out of a Labor government than they will out of this mob, that is obvious.

But I think that, if that comparative wage justice had been applied to earlier rounds of wage claims in the ACT, then we would not have had the long drawn-out row with the teachers, for example, and now with the nurses, about what their pay rates ought to be. The teachers dispute was eventually settled with a tendency to comparative wage justice, but it took a long time, and there was a lot of disquiet in our government schools while the wrangling went on. That was not good for education, it was not good for future relations with the teachers union, or the students in our schools. The same applies now with the nurses.

I have long been a supporter of the concept of arbitration. I suppose you could call our pay rates in here an industrial matter of one sort of another, using the old interpretation of the term. I find it quite uncomfortable that we have an arbitration process, if you like, when other workers do not. I mean, they have to suffer under the Reith legislation, which is punishing legislation, and limits the powers of workers quite substantially.

Now, I heard Mr Moore say, I suspect in defence of that legislation, that the reason that we had moved to get the nurses back into an equal negotiating position with the government was so they could go on strike. That was never the reason at all. The reason was that they could then get back into a more even situation and negotiate outcomes fairly, and then possibly have access to the assistance of the Industrial Relations Commission to get an outcome.

Regrettably, arbitration outcomes in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission have been severely limited by the current federal government. That is a shame and I trust that, after the next federal election, there will be a turnaround on that issue, so that there are fairer outcomes.

The reason I raise this is that I want to draw attention to the fact that the fairest outcome is the one that is out of our hands, and the fairest outcome for other workers in the ACT should be out of our hands as well. That is why Mr Moore should have allowed the nurses to be in an equal bargaining position with him, to ensure a fair outcome on their wages, and a possible arbitration of the matter in the case of a dispute that could not be settled.

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