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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (13 March) . . Page.. 1034 ..
MR CORNWELL
(continuing):News last night that Totalcare workers "faced a lot of uncertainty and that's not fair". I agree, Ms Gallagher.
Mr Treasurer, why have you not been fair to Totalcare workers-in my view and in the Minister for Industrial Relations' view-and advised them that caucus had already decided their fate on Monday, and will you be prepared to table the caucus motion in this Assembly? Why have you not been fair to the Totalcare workers and advised them that caucus had already decided their fate on Monday?
MR QUINLAN
: At one stage, Mr Cornwell asked me why I had not been fair, in his opinion. Well, I do not want to be fair in Mr Cornwell's opinion, let me tell you. If you had read the newspaper carefully, Mr Cornwell, you would have read that the examination of Totalcare's future would be guided by recommendations from a Treasury review-and on it went.I love my Treasury officials dearly, but I concede that occasionally they can be quite dry in their recommendations and quite black and white. However, there was a Treasury review, with some recommendations, which also contained a significant amount of information regarding the performance of various divisions of Totalcare, which is essential to the deliberations. There are some recommendations there about what events should take place and what timing. However, the reason why we put the working party together is to allow all the affected stakeholders to come together and work through that information and those recommendations, towards coming up with those of their own.
Why haven't I been fair? Mr Cornwell, I won't actually be tabling the caucus decision in this place. But at the same time, I will introduce you to Quinlan's theory of information osmosis. It goes: nobody leaks the information, but it still gets out. I prefer to believe in the theory of information osmosis because the alternative is too disturbing to contemplate. But just in case the osmosis happened to be rather rapid, I am not so silly as not to have provided significant detail to the union involved immediately afterwards.
Members of the Assembly will not have missed the irony of this feigned concern for the workers-I was going to say from the "arch conservative"of the Assembly but, looking at the composition of the opposition these days, we probably have the most conservative of oppositions, and you are not on your own anymore, Mr Cornwell. The number of hard-right conservatives over there is quite staggering. As I said, the irony of this concern for the workers I find quite staggering.
Mr Speaker, the government has been, and will be, entirely fair. As far as I am concerned, the feigned concern for the workers coming from that side of the house latterly is not far short of humorous. I think everybody in the place is aware that the job that we have embarked on with Totalcare is going to be a very difficult job. You have already heard Ms Gallagher explain some of the difficulties. It is going to require delicate industrial negotiations, and I am sure the opposition would love to derail those. Far from being concerned for the workers, I am sure they would love to derail them.
I am sorry, Mr Cornwell: we have been fair and we will continue to be fair with the workers of Totalcare. At the same time, we will continue to pursue the objective of being fair to the ACT taxpayer in terms of the service and the effective and efficient delivery of that service.
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