Page 1995 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
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this community in the future. The days of extensive government funding and certainly Commonwealth funding and the Commonwealth providing jobs are gone, and this will mean a lack of jobs for young Canberrans. This will mean a poorer Canberra going down the chute economically.
This is a very important piece of legislation. It must be balanced; it must represent the legitimate safety needs, work needs and health needs of employees; it must also ensure that businesses are not unduly imposed upon, with costs or with unnecessary restrictions, and it must encourage agreements made, I would submit, at the workplace between employers and employees coming to a sensible arrangement themselves without outside interference, be it by government, unions or whatever.
A number of amendments will be put forward on Thursday. I have a number of papers here, which were given to us by the persons appearing before the committee. I am quite happy to make those available to members. There are a number of documents which were put before the committee and which I would encourage members to look at - and also the transcript of proceedings, if they are able to - prior to debating the detail stage of this Bill, because I think that will be very edifying for them. I stress again this is vitally important legislation and it behoves us to make a very sensible decision and make sure it is balanced so it does work.
MR MOORE (8.39): I would just like to deal with a couple of the points that have been brought up by the Deputy Chief Minister, because I spoke at length on this topic when the committee report was brought down. At that time, when we talked about this matter of "involved unions" which has caused so much concern, I made it very clear that the action of the committee, as I considered it, did not exclude the unions at all but just did not compulsorily include the unions. That was the stance that I took, and it was a matter of some public debate between me and Mr Charles McDonald of the Trades and Labour Council of the ACT. As the debate continued and neither of us seemed prepared to move, I sent a letter to Charles McDonald that read:
I would like once again to extend an invitation to you and/or your officers to discuss the proposed Occupational Health and Safety Legislation.
You will recall from my phone call at about 5.00 pm on October 5 that I believe any claims that the Rally has excluded Unions from the legislation to be unfounded. Whilst we have not accepted compulsory inclusion it has certainly never been our goal or intention to exclude unions in any way.
That applies particularly to me as a very longstanding union member. The letter continued:
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