Page 4103 - Week 13 - Thursday, 10 November 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Ms Ellis: He fooled you.
MR LAMONT: He fooled me - for the first meeting, anyway. The issues which were covered by the ministerial statement are, indeed, significant issues, and they do demonstrate, quite clearly, a significant divergence between what the Liberal Party proposes and the Labor Party strategy for industrial relations. The cooperative approach has seen in the last 24 hours the registration before the Industrial Relations Commission of probably the largest single public sector enterprise agreement. It has already achieved significant reform, and it will allow further significant reform to be achieved over the life of the agreement. That is something that would be rather novel to those opposite, in terms of their trying to proceed to achieve such an agreement. It is not because the unions would not be prepared to negotiate; they would be.
Mr Stefaniak: I thought you just said that he did it.
Mr De Domenico: No, they would not talk to me.
MR LAMONT: When you said that he would, that is my argument. My argument is that if you put Mr Kaine back into industrial relations you could probably get those sorts of discussions. You could get some outcomes, some of which may be similar to yesterday's. They would not be similar with De Domenico in charge of industrial relations - or bovver boy Bill. With him it is not a problem - lock them up; hit them with the move-on powers. This gives us the opportunity to delineate quite clearly between the sort of "frightpack", wet and charming Alexander Downer-type rhetoric of Mr De Domenico and the substance that we have been able to deliver; the substance that we will continue to be able to deliver; the change that we can cooperatively aspire to; the change that you will never, in your wildest dreams, be able to achieve until you jettison the sort of nonsense that Mr De Domenico was going on with this afternoon.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
QUARTERLY FINANCIAL STATEMENT AND TREASURER'S ADVANCE
Papers
Debate resumed from 24 August 1994, on motion by Ms Follett:
That the Assembly takes note of the papers.
MR KAINE (5.23): Madam Speaker, it will be a bit of a change to get back to something substantive, instead of the airy-fairy stuff we have been listening to. The subject of the debate is some documents tabled some time ago by the Chief Minister in connection with the budget for the financial year 1993-94. I have no particular comment to make about the content of those documents, but I would like to say something about the continuing difficulty of getting information that matches.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .