Page 31 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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Here is an agreement, albeit an ambit agreement, involving $6.5m - perhaps it is a bit more than $6.5m - and what does this visionary Government, concerned about public funds, concerned about social justice, social equity and all these sorts of other cliches, do? It completely ignores all the warnings it has had from the Transport Workers Union. It will not even sit down and talk to them officially. It will not even sit down and talk to them unless they agree to this centralised, bureaucratic, non-flexible industrial relations system. No other government in this country - I think no other government on earth, in fact - is following the example of this Government, and in particular Mr Berry, in wanting this bureaucratic, cumbersome, centralised, inflexible system.
Mr Kaine: The Supreme Soviet.
MR DE DOMENICO: Exactly. No wonder there are unionists standing out there and saying, "Hey, listen, Mr Berry; you have got it wrong". As I said, Ms Follett can stand up here and say, "Listen, it takes a long time to do all these things". Sure it does. The Chief Minister has had two years. She sought no public consultation whatsoever. She is prepared to sit on her hands, steady as she goes, and leave matters as they are.
That is not the way to establish a new ACT public service. Centralised, inflexible things are not the way to establish a new ACT public service. The unions agree with that, and everybody else agrees with that - except this Government. This Government, as always, puts ideology before commonsense. Ms Follett tries to say that the Liberal Party is doing nothing. The Liberal Party is saying, "Listen, let us all stand where sensible people meet. Let us have a look at what has happened in other States and Territories and let us make sure that we do not make the same mistakes". If we continue along the track of centralised, inflexible industrial relations systems, it is no wonder that most of our 23,000 public servants - whether they be bus drivers, teachers, doctors, people in the Legal Aid Office or people in the DPP - say, "Hey, listen; the way you are doing it is not the way we think you should do it. It is going to affect us. Please listen to what we have to say". But this Government will never listen.
MR LAMONT (4.07): I thank Mr De Domenico for his farewell speech as the chairman of the Select Committee on the Establishment of an ACT Public Service, and I will remind him of some of his own words a little bit later. I regard it as somewhat apocryphal that this matter of public importance has been placed upon the paper today by a member of the Liberal Party about to be appointed to the Select Committee on the Establishment of an ACT Public Service. I find it somewhat apocryphal because it is quite obvious that he has a quite deliberate intention to proceed in a particular direction as far as this committee's inquiry is concerned. It is also extremely obvious that he has not been listening to the experts, at least the self-proclaimed experts, on the establishment of an ACT public service. Mr Kaine, do you believe that you should do that? The answer obviously is yes. Let me remind Mr Kaine of one of the experts and what they have said about where the Government is up to. Mr Deputy Speaker, let me quote:
The committee's work was greatly assisted by a briefing from the Chief Minister and officers of her department on 31 August 1993. The briefing focused on the ACT Government's submission to the committee, which we received on 13 August 1993 and which was briefly discussed in this chamber on 14 October. The submission
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