Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 364 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

What they are now doing, as they did before, is telling employers not to pay, that they do not have to pay. Of course, many workers do not have the wherewithal to challenge that. The situation we are now in is that the Canberra chamber are saying, "You do not have to pay because the legal battle is not over. It's not over yet. We haven't given up fighting". They will never give up fighting about this important workers' right.

What they are trying to do now is to undermine attendance at the union picnic day so that at some time in the future they can say, "There is no attendance at it, so we shouldn't bother any more".

The chamber should be ashamed of itself. It has been a disgrace in two senses: The ideological battle that it has taken on in relation to workers having a cheap day out once a year and the amount of its members' funds that it has poured into this campaign trying to knock off picnic day. The message that needs to go out to the employers is that the law that was passed by this Assembly is the law. No matter what the Canberra chamber says about it, it is the law, and employers are obliged to comply with it; that is, where their employees in the private sector are entitled to union picnic day, they have to be given it no matter what the chamber says. If the chamber want to take this issue off to the High Court and invest another $100,000 of their members' hard-earned money in furthering the court battle, well, good on them, if their membership are silly enough to let them keep spending money on this ideological struggle. The fact is that the chamber should pull its head in and stop giving employers the wrong mail. The fact is that this is the law; it is a law of this Assembly. Not only the chamber, but everybody in this Assembly, should respect the law as well. It is an important day for workers in the ACT.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Assembly adjourned at 5.20 pm until Tuesday, 9 March 1999, at 10.30 am

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .