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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1834 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The third point seems to be the question of the clerks union versus the journalists and the commission's involvement in that. I do not know which unions my staff members belong to, if any. In fact, I know that one does not belong to any union at all. I do not know about the other two. What is the point about journalists? How many staff members of this place are practising journalists and therefore belong to the journalists union? I have no statistics on that. I simply do not know.

There also seems to be the proposition that if we do not overturn the Chief Minister's determination, somehow the Industrial Relations Commission will determine the matter. As far as I understand it, Commonwealth law overrides our law anyway; so, if there is a continuing difference of opinion over this matter, the commission will determine it matter anyway, regardless of whether we disallow the Chief Minister's determinations. I am not too sure what we are arguing about this morning. Perhaps the Industrial Relations Commission is the place where the matter ought to be resolved. What is the problem in taking it to that body and having it resolved if it is the right place and it will be the final arbiter anyway?

I do not know about Mr Corbell's so-called facts. As I said, I started off thinking that I was pretty clear, that it was a pretty simple and basic matter. It has turned out not to be and I am not clear that I understand the issues at all now. A practice that I work to if I do not think I understand, if I am in doubt, is to vote no, which is a prudent way to go. I do not know what the consequences are of my voting yes on this motion. I do not know what the consequences are for my staff, I do not know what the consequences are for me and I do not know what the consequences are for all of us.

I would say that I do not think that we ought to be getting into an enterprise bargaining agreement on the basis that this is one big enterprise. As far as I am concerned, it is 17 different enterprises and I am one-seventeenth of it. I do not know that I want to have the Chief Minister getting into the middle of discussions between me and my staff as to what their conditions will be, how much they will be paid, what hours they will work and the like. It is not really his business. I do know that there is one legal body in this town, namely, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, that in a case that came before it within the last three or four years accepted the argument that the member is the employer for all practical purposes. It is the member who negotiates an employment agreement. It is the member who signs that agreement. The Chief Minister does not sign agreements with my staff; I do. The member determines the conditions under which the employees will work. That is all done under the basis of an allowance provided to me so that I can employ staff. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal accepted the proposition that the member is, for all practical purposes, the employer.

Despite Mr Corbell's proposition that that is not the case, he will have to produce some evidence of the fact. If he believes that he is not the employer of his staff, I am not the employer of mine and Mr Rugendyke is not the employer of his, Mr Corbell will have to bring forward some evidence to prove that that is the case. Frankly, I do not believe that it is. It is by no means a simple issue. It is not as simple as it was put forward to me in the first place. Like Mr Rugendyke, I have real concerns now about the ramifications of all of it. Perhaps we should leave it to the industrial relations tribunal to determine, rather than trying to pre-empt them by making a decision which

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