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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 103 ..

MRS CARNELL: The position the Government has taken the whole way through this dispute has been a conciliatory approach. The Government has moved from an initial position in the budget of 1.3 per cent per year to an offer that is now on the table of 4.1 per cent over 18 months, and a total willingness to negotiate above that on the basis of enterprise-specific bargaining. We believe strongly that negotiations should go ahead, but they certainly cannot go ahead while there is a gun at the head of the Government, while the unions are not even willing to lift six of 106-plus bans. Goodwill has to be something that comes from both sides in any set of negotiations. If you have a situation where one side is not willing to do anything and the other side has moved on a number of occasions, you are not going to get anything really decent around a negotiating table. A negotiating table is where both sides are willing to give and come up with a position in the middle. At this stage, I have seen no willingness at all to give from the TLC. Mind you, there may be some other options.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, my question also has to do with the union disputes. I ask the Chief Minister: Now that you have made an offer in an attempt to negotiate with the Australian Education Union, will you demonstrate good faith in extending the same sort of negotiations to other unions as well?

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much for that question. Yes is the simple answer. We believe strongly that negotiating with individual unions is something that we will do tomorrow. It is the TLC that has refused to lift the six bans that are in place. We are more than willing to, as we did last night, come up with offers to various unions. It is really interesting that Jeremy Pyner and the TLC seem to be preventing us from talking particularly to lower paid workers in the ACT Government. A 9 per cent fully budget funded increase certainly has huge benefits to those on higher incomes, but it really does not address a lot of the problems of people on lower incomes. There are a number of options, such as potentially a flat rate offer to people on lower incomes, and we will be very willing to have those sorts of discussions.

It is interesting that a number of unions have already approached the Government with the view that they may like to have discussions with us individually, which is certainly a very positive outcome. We are very willing to have discussions with individual unions. We are very willing to come up with pay offers that suit the membership of those particular unions. In other words, as I said, for lower paid workers maybe we should be looking at flat rate increases. Maybe that suits lower paid workers better than a percentage, particularly a fully budget funded 9 per cent that would cost the people of Canberra $27m a year. That sort of approach is simply unacceptable.

What we showed last night by the 7 per cent offer to teachers was that you can come up with offers of quite definite increases to people out there who are working for the ACT Government by looking at productivity increases that do not affect services.

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