Page 2087 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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industry at present. We feel the industry must be given this choice.
The ACT has been granted self-government, we have attained statehood, and as such we should be ensuring that the ACT's industries and the economy as a whole are supported by a government which keeps ACT money within the ACT. This scheme would ensure that the future of every employee in the building and construction industry today and in the future would have adequate redundancy benefits to cover the fluctuating nature of the industry and at the same time keep the industry, through training and research, as advanced technologically in the ACT as anywhere else in Australia and the world.
I have asked the legislative counsel to prepare a working draft of the legislation necessary to implement such a scheme. Once this is completed, I will be happy to distribute it and discuss it with all interested groups and with members of this Assembly.
MR COLLAERY (3.53): The Residents Rally supports the general thrust of our colleague Mr Stefaniak's proposals - that is, the Rally has discussed these proposals with the affected parties, at least initially. Clearly the background to this matter is a competition between a proposition, basically from the traditional elements of the building industry, that the redundancy scheme be managed by the Long Service Leave Board, an independent statutory authority, in other words, and a proposal that the scheme be managed essentially by a private superannuation investment fund which is jointly coordinated by the AFCC and the AMP Society. They are called the CERT and MERT funds.
Mr Speaker, the Residents Rally does not want to be drawn into an internecine battle on this issue. It merely adopts the view, having listened to the arguments basically on both sides, that it is a mechanical problem rather than an in-principle one. All parties accept the need for a redundancy scheme. One party, specifically the BWIU, does not support the statutory scheme. The BWIU prefers the CERT-MERT funds mainly because, as we understand it, they provide over-award payments and constitute a type of savings plan for the workers. The fact is that there are award provisions regarding redundancy that have not yet been woven into that fabric. There are still some complexities about the concepts that redundancy schemes in one manner provide over-award benefits, and particularly schemes that mean benefits accrue from day one and benefits accrue for early retirement.
Essentially the redundancy trust fund that the Master Builders Construction and Housing Association of the ACT supports appears to be the appropriate way to go. It would appear that a statutory trust fund concept has been accepted in relation to many other areas of enterprise where funds that really belong to another party are held:
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