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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1468 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

On the other hand, it is well understood that nurses' pay rates are not as attractive as they ought to be. They do not compare well to other places. If you want to get nurses, you have got to have decent wages and conditions-and working conditions include the attitude of their potential bosses-under which nurses can work productively in the interests of the community.

The government had an opportunity to do that. This Assembly ordered the government to put the nurses in a position to be able to bargain, within the meaning of the Workplace Relations Act, for an outcome following the wages offer they had rejected. The rejection was a result of the government's hunger to rip some conditions off nurses out on the job. But the government did not want to do that; all it wanted to do was tell the nurses what they should have.

When the nurses did not take up the offer, all we got was tantrums from the health minister and anybody else associated with the government who felt it was necessary to criticise the nurses. The tantrums did not get us anywhere: we still have not got a decent pay outcome for the nurses, and we still have ongoing antagonism between the parties, which is not helping patients within our public hospital system. It is something this government will not be and should not be forgiven for. It is an absolute disgrace.

It was disgraceful to hear the health minister say that the reason the Labor Party was pushing the motion in the Assembly was so that nurses could take industrial action. Nowhere in Australia does anybody say that the Workplace Relations Act, created by Peter Reith, enhances one's ability to exercise strike action. It is the most restrictive piece of legislation on industrial action we have had in this country for many years, probably since just after Federation.

The power of arbitration was taken away from the commissioner and, while politicians in this place, particularly the executive, rejoice in the power of arbitration over their own pay rates, they have not been prepared to put the nurses in an equal bargaining position, as was intended by the Workplace Relations Act. That is the truth of the matter, nothing else. The government wanted to impose its will on employees by abusing the Workplace Relations Act and abusing its position of power.

It has failed to resolve the situation in favour of the nursing work force. That will be remembered; there is no doubt about that. So, too, will the long and festering dispute with the teachers in our education system, when negotiations in relation to teachers were drawn out until the government worked out that the resolve of teachers was stronger than its own and folded in the face of it. Happily, teachers got a satisfactory outcome from this government. The government's performance in industrial relations has been cruel in many respects. I will come back to that a little later.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I will deal just briefly with education funding because it has been dealt with by Mr Stanhope to a fair degree. The government-Mr Moore in particular-have based much of their existence in this place on their claim to maintain education funding in real terms. In effect, that meant that the government sat on their hands as far as education funding was concerned. They relied on the consumer price index rather than on trends elsewhere-the Productivity Commission exposed the government's failure to keep up with trends elsewhere. The ACT government's pre-eminent position in education funding slipped well back. That cannot be denied and

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