Page 2094 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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at the outset, actions speak louder than words. The actions of this minister should be to stand up for the workers who are not getting their pay and should be to stand up and account and be prepared to account to the ACT taxpayer why the pay system at the hospital is so bad. Why is the pay system so bad? Why is it that year on year young doctors have to scrounge to be paid the hours that they are due?
This is an important motion. It is an important motion to show just how we support our health workers. How we support our health workers is not just by kind words, which they deserve in abundance. In addition to kind words, they deserve a working environment that is safe, where they are not harassed and where they can be sure that when they get their payslip, the payslip represents the amount of time that they have worked and the proper wages that they have earned in that period.
I commend the motion and I commend to the Assembly the audit of the pay system for Canberra Health Services.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children, Youth and Families and Minister for Health) (3.08): For the information of Mrs Dunne, I will not, in fact, be moving the amendment that was circulated earlier in my name because Minister Rattenbury has circulated a further amendment that Labor members will be supporting. Minister Rattenbury’s amendment that has been circulated notes the government’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that all staff are treated with respect and paid fairly and accurately, and that is indeed part of our commitment.
Mrs Dunne noted that I was, indeed, the Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations when we introduced the Secure Local Jobs Act and the code, which those opposite absolutely failed to support, opposed at every turn, delayed, obfuscated about and, ultimately, did not want another mechanism in place to ensure that the organisations that the ACT government contracts with are bound to pay their workers fairly and treat them fairly and uphold workers’ rights.
Mrs Dunne also says that she has been hearing about this for some time but, bizarrely, as far as I am aware, she has never raised it; not with me, not in the regular briefings that she has with Canberra Health Services, which include, often, the CEO and/or the Deputy CEO, and I do not believe that she has ever written to me about it—these issues, raised for some time but never, ever, ever been raised with me until the 11th hour, where I did say, in the press conference, that I was disappointed about the way that Mrs Dunne has raised this issue.
This is an important issue and if Mrs Dunne wanted to raise it, she could have. She has been hearing about it for all this time? She could have included it in her motion that she submitted on Monday, but she did not. She put forward a motion which I thought, “This is great. Going to stand up, tripartisan, thank our health workers for all the really important work they have been doing, not just during COVID-19 but the work that they do all the time.” If Mrs Dunne had asked the question, we could have given her some information.
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