Page 1129 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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I put this motion to the Assembly as a matter of utmost importance. It may perhaps be the most important issue we deal with this year, if not this term, because matters at the real heart of this motion—it is not simply about a piece of paper; these are not mere words on a page—are about the very nature of this government and how it does business.
It is not about worker safety. It is not about saving lives. It is not about value for money for the taxpayer or sound business. Purely and simply, it is about power and financial gain: gaining power, keeping power and abusing power. That pursuit of power is codified with the force of law to favour the militant arm of the union movement. I think this is an important distinction. It is not all unions who are aware of or support this relationship; it is the factional power players. Those factional heavies have taken over the Labor Party and have now been given similar power over the entire government.
It is not just the Canberra Liberals who are saying this. Even former Labor leaders, giants for their cause, have been driven to despair by the depths to which this Labor government has sunk. In an article entitled “Former chief minister Jon Stanhope slams party corruption and factionalism” in the Canberra Times of 22 August 2015, Mr Stanhope said publicly that the unions and factions have “corrupted the party”. He called for an end to what he described as the “rorting” in the party that “has seen it become the plaything for a handful of union-based factional leaders”.
Although Jon Stanhope and I have disagreed on various issues of policy over the years, I acknowledge his relentless efforts to clean up ACT Labor. This Chief Minister and this Labor Party have shown no such commitment. Even without the MOU, the merging of the CFMEU and ACT Labor has reached a point where it is difficult to see the actions of either as separate.
The centralisation of power between this government and the unions finds no better expression than the MOU that is at the centre of today’s motion. It really is one of the most extraordinary documents ever to come to light in the history of government in any state or jurisdiction. It is not a business-as-usual document. It is not a simple understanding to share knowledge. It is certainly not, as I said previously, about safety, and it is not a document that has been widely publicised.
A look at the terms of this MOU shows the extraordinary grip that the unions wield not just over the Labor government but over every aspect of government business in this territory. These are just some of the provisions in the document. The MOU states in its definitions section:
Consultation means providing relevant information to UnionsACT and/or the relevant unions as identified by Unions ACT.
It then states:
It means more than a mere exchange of information.
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