Page 4096 - Week 13 - Thursday, 10 November 1994

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LABOUR MINISTERS COUNCIL MEETING

Paper

Debate resumed from 15 June 1994, on motion by Mr Lamont:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

MR DE DOMENICO (5.02): Madam Speaker, I read with interest again the statement made by the Minister on the meeting held on 20 May, and I have to say that there is very little in the statement the Minister made that I - - -

Mr Lamont: Could disagree with.

MR DE DOMENICO: There is little I could disagree with. I agree with Mr Lamont. I have since then attended a conference of Liberal Party Ministers and Shadow Ministers for Industrial Relations. Perhaps I was in a similar situation to Mr Lamont because - - -

Mr Kaine: Are you tabling a report?

MR DE DOMENICO: No. I am just trying to think of the way Mr Lamont would feel. Unlike his meeting, it was interesting that there were only two non-Ministers. They were the industrial relations spokespeople for Queensland and the ACT. All the others were Ministers.

Mr Lamont: Listen, mate; that will continue, so get used to it.

MR DE DOMENICO: Minister, I am not going to comment on that. We will let the people of the ACT decide that on 18 February. Do not put any bets on it now. As I said, in terms of what the Minister had to say, there was very little one could disagree with. He did say that there seemed to be unanimity on most of the issues discussed at the conference that he attended, and I can tell him that there was absolute unanimity at the conference that I attended as well.

Without wishing to start playing politics on the Minister's statement, I must admit that I was quite interested in seeing him say that the most contentious item which was discussed was the legislative frameworks established by the Commonwealth and by the States to promote decentralisation of wage bargaining processes. I thought hard and long about whether that is what is happening here in the ACT. Whilst not wanting to get into an argument about semantics with the Minister or anybody else, I dare say that perhaps we can go a little bit further than we have in making sure that we do promote decentralisation of wage bargaining processes.


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