Page 1494 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (3.48): Mr Deputy Speaker, there has been one constant in Australian politics for over 100 years, and that is that the conservatives hate the union movement, and for good reason. It is because the union movement, and out of the union movement the Labor Party, has been at the forefront of achieving change not just in this country but overseas. These are the people who, in the last few years, have been extolling the fact that the walls came down in Berlin and that democracy and freedom are now spreading throughout Eastern Europe. Why did that happen, Mr Deputy Speaker? It happened principally because of the emergence of the trade union movement in Poland about 15 years ago. Once again the emergence of a strong trade union movement has led to the spreading of democratic ideas. Conservatives, whether they happen to be conservative Australian tories or conservative Russian Marxists, do not like the emergence of a strong trade union movement. In recent years the conservatives have hit on the concept, "Let us say that we are protecting discrimination by our attacks on the trade union movement". A hundred years ago the cry was freedom of choice. The conservatives were protecting freedom of choice when they were objecting to the spread of unionism on the wharves and in the shearing sheds.
Nothing, Mr Deputy Speaker, has changed. These people object to trade unionism because of the role that trade unionism has played in this country for over 100 years. Mr Kaine says, "Is it not shocking that Mr Lamont says that a Federal award, or an enterprise bargain which is certified and therefore can have the same powers as a Federal award, overrides an ACT law?"; and, "Is it not shocking that Mr Lamont says that that is so?". It is not Mr Lamont who says that that is so; it is the High Court that has said that that is so since about 1930, and successive governments, Labor or Liberal, have not done anything to alter the law and to alter that position. A Federal award will override a law not just of this Territory but of any State in Australia. That is not because of anything that any government of any particular persuasion says; it is because it is in the Constitution. A Federal law, including an award, will override a State law.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not want to go on at any greater length, because the Liberals have said nothing new. You could have dusted off these speeches out of any Hansard of any parliament in Australia back into the 1890s. The conservatives do not like trade unionism, they do not like the spread of trade unionism, and they hit on whatever is the fashionable idea of the time. Back in the 1890s it was freedom of choice; now it is the emergence of discrimination legislation that they use to dress up their objection to trade unionism. We know that it is merely huff and puff. We know what they are really on about, and we reject it.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.51): The amendment to the Discrimination Act which was passed last year, the amendment moved by Mr Moore in the Assembly, was opposed quite vigorously by the ALP Government at the time, and in a sense that was fair enough. They have their client groups to which they must cater; they have their point of principle. I think "principle" is an extremely loose description of what they believe in this matter, but let us call it that for the sake of argument. They happen to believe that the principle that one should preserve the supremacy of unions, the power that unions have developed in the workplace, is an important principle and it should be protected, and they therefore went about opposing this legislation when it appeared in the Assembly. Okay.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .