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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 870 ..


MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The point I was making was that the ANF, led by Colleen Duff, has made a very clear statement that they wish to run candidates in the next election, which I welcome. I always welcome anybody who wants to run in a democracy. But I also pointed out that Ms Duff is the President of the ACT Trades and Labour Council. You were wondering about which position. The disappointing part there is that I said that it seems to me there is a confusion in her roles as leader of the ANF and leader of the Trades and Labour Council in dealing with this issue.

Mr Quinlan: You are an Independent standing over there in a Liberal government.

Mr Stanhope: Residents Rally, NIMBY, Independent, Democrat.

Mr Smyth: Mr Speaker, standing order 202 (e), persistently and wilfully disregard the chair.

MR SPEAKER: Yes. Mr Corbell and Mr Berry are already under a warning.

Mr Berry: And we are being very good in intolerable circumstances.

MR SPEAKER: I will be the judge of that.

MR MOORE: It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that what we know clearly from Calvary is that 83 per cent of nurses think that this is an excellent offer. We have an almost identical offer-in fact it is a little more generous in some respects-at the Canberra Hospital, and it is the nurses federation in particular and a small number of hard line federation members who are preventing this from going to a democratic ballot. A democratic ballot is the most important way. They seem to have had some success in convincing some of the nurses at the Canberra Hospital that the Calvary Hospital offer was somehow very different. That simply was not the case. In fact there were minor extra workplace reforms which differed between each of the three agencies where the offer was made. The core pay and conditions are the same. The differences were also known right from the beginning, from 4 December when the offer was published. Nurses, unfortunately, are not going to be allowed to exercise any say on this issue.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: this question was directed to Michael Moore, the minister for health, an Independent in the ACT, not Peter Reith.

MR SPEAKER: Sit down. There is no point of order. Do it again and you will be in trouble.

MR MOORE: How many times are you going to tell him he is going to be in trouble? The union has retained to itself the right to block the industrial rights of the great majority of nurses, and that is the part that I think is frustrating, unfair and disappointing in its reflection of the way that some unions work-the sorts of unions that Mr Berry constantly supports and seems to think should have a say over the top of the bedside nurses

Mr Stanhope: You are getting to the nub of it now.


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