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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1840 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

all of the conditions that you can apply to your staff. As the employer, it sets down those conditions for you as delegate to use as a guideline.

Mr Speaker, it is open to an employee, as it is open to anybody here, through their union, to challenge those in the Industrial Relations Commission by means of a paper dispute which then becomes a dispute between the employee and the employer, the government. From here on, a member's influence over those terms and conditions is zilch, because they will be determined by way of settlement of that dispute, whether it be an enterprise bargaining agreement, a certified agreement or whatever. That would be a matter for the Industrial Relations Commission. Relieving ourselves of this instrument-dumping it, that is, in accordance with my motion-will change nothing in relation to all of that.

The instrument tries to create the impression that members are the employers. They are not; they are delegates of the employer. It tries also to put in place a no-disadvantage test which is based on a lower award in the ACT, and the no-disadvantage test will apply specifically in relation to Australian workplace agreements. Members say, "My staff are not going to be disadvantaged by that." I accept that; neither will mine. But we have some obligations to staff of the future and staff of other members if they are mistreated, I would think. One of our obligations is to make sure that the terms and conditions under which members negotiate are fair.

Going back to the point that was made by Mr Kaine, the Industrial Relations Commission is the place to determine whether terms and conditions are fair, not here. That is why we should not be determining that that award is the baseline for Australian workplace agreements. We should be letting other people make those determinations. I think that the appropriate place for them to be determined is in the Industrial Relations Commission.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and other unions, I suspect, will want their awards to be the base line because, in one way or another, that will then give them some lien on making claims about coverage in this area. But that is not to say that the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance will succeed, or any other union for that matter. Again, we should not be determining that. That is something that ought to be sorted out between the parties. The parties in this matter are the workers, through their unions, and the employer, the ACT government.

There is one condition on what I said, that is, that J345 is the award with coverage for press secretaries. My employees probably would qualify in one way or another. A whole heap of other employees would qualify, as far as I can see. The clerks award does not apply to those people. Why would you have as a base line the clerks award, which does not apply to those sorts of people in the Assembly? That is why the matter is the subject of dispute in the Industrial Relations Commission.

That is where it ought to be sorted out. We should not have a situation where the government is trying to create a set of conditions which could throw us into conflict with the Industrial Relations Commission and federal law. It is not our job to create laws and conditions which create disputes between us and federal authorities, especially when those federal authorities can sort out the dispute or the difference

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