Page 1057 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
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industrial relations. However, and sadly, having listened to his speech, I note that it is yet again a thinly veiled beat-up of the yet to be felt outcomes of the federal governmentâs WorkChoices legislation.
This I take as an indication that Mr Gentleman has progressed his patterns of thinking and shifted his ideological stance towards realising that in the ACT we do have a very differently organised work force that reflects the unique working patterns that Canberrans engage in, whether in the public or private sectors. The Chief Minister himself rallied behind the facts. The ACT has the lowest unemployment levels in the country. We have some of the best living conditions. Employment prospects could not get much better. I am tempted to put the notion out there that, looking beyond any impending cuts to the ACT public service, most Canberrans are in the enviable position of balancing work and their personal pursuits, family interests and lifestyle.
I sense, however, that this is a debate to allow further gazing into a crystal ball, the one that the Liberal opposition wishes it had. It is still clearly the intent of the ACT Labor Party to continue to provide a running commentary on some of the possible and at this point relatively unknown and untested impacts of the package of federal industrial relations legislation in the ACT.
At this point I will correct the public record and state that I intended to raise a point of order under standing order 130, not standing order 63. Standing order 130 deals with anticipation of business. My concern always about the matters that Mr Gentleman raises is that we may, in fact, be reflecting on a matter that is currently before a select committee.
The trouble is that without allowing a reasonable amount of time to pass the Liberal opposition finds it difficult to believe that the Stanhope government has amassed enough evidence to present the Canberra community with a comprehensive, accurate and well researched position that could in turn be debated, digested and commented upon. In fact, I would like to veer to a topic of somewhat peripheral interest which in no way should be given any less precedence in debate, and that is the pressure that Canberra families are faced with in their lives, not just those pressures surrounding flexibility of conditions in the workplace, which is in general fairly well established in the ACT.
I agree with most commentary that families where both parents are working full time are faced with some difficult choices in organising care for children during working hours. This has an ongoing impact on working conditions. If families do not feel secure in the knowledge that their children are receiving adequate, responsive and, ultimately, available forms of care, then naturally this could have negative spin-offs on work performance and/or productivity.
Mr Gentleman might be interested to know that I recently sought some advice from the federal minister for family services. I asked how difficult it would be for the ACT to be in the position to offer more funded childcare places in the ACT, and I hope Mr Corbell is listening to this. The response was quite simple. If an environment is fostered in the territory in which new childcare facilities can be given approval and then built, the commonwealth will follow through by providing a response to the flow of claims for any benefit that parents would be eligible to access. In other words, it could be as simplistic as the recent decision by the Minister for Planning that if you give the impression to the
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