Page 3786 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 October 2005
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trade away so that I can get this job?” If parents say, “I don’t really want to trade away your rights; how about you stay on the award system?” will the teenager say, “I won’t get the job then because I want you to trade away my penalty rates and my shift rate. I want to work every public holiday; I want to work, on average, 38 hours a week”—if it is a full-time job and they are under 18—“but it does not matter if that gets changed, I will work Sundays for no extra pay.” That is simpler for the young people because the choice is taken out of their hands. And it is up to our generation, as parents, to trade away our children’s rights.
If we look back to when we all entered the labour market, we had protections that were provided to us. They are all going to be gone when our kids are going into the work force. It is going to be dog eat dog; mum and dad trade away your rights. If you are over 18, then again, it is like poor Billy on the dole. I do not know how he does this. He manages to engage a bargaining agent. They are quite expensive. I imagine he has saved up his dole for about three months and engaged a bargaining agent. Then he goes and trades away his rights. I presume Billy is over 18 because he has got the ability to trade away his own rights.
I listened to Mr Mulcahy. I wonder when was the last time Mr Mulcahy negotiated his own employment conditions. I wonder if he could stand here and say, “The system being put in place by the federal government will be good enough for my children when they enter the work force because the minimum is good enough for my kids.” If he stands here and says that, it is not a truthful analysis. It is not about creating opportunity and improving the situation, as generation after generation have done in Australia to make sure that, every time we hand over employment to the next generation, they have got a better set of conditions than we worked under.
I am sorry, that is what we should be talking about providing, not chipping away and having an absolute minimum base level to provide for our children; not: “Holiday pay, public holidays, double time and shift penalties are really not important for the generations to come.” It is a really sad day when we hear people stand up and say that this is a fantastic opportunity. If we were to apply these conditions, the minimum standards, to our workplaces here in the ACT government, I imagine there would be, quite rightly, outrage across the communities that we have a responsibility for.
If I could reflect for a moment on this, because Mr Mulcahy always talks about flexibility and productivity and how improvements in productivity can be sought through tighter bargaining strategies, I must say, we did not hear a peep out of the Liberal opposition staffers when they were accepting, quite rightly, their pay rises that they were entitled to—more than the chickenfeed they were getting under Carnell—as a result of the move from individual contracts onto a collective agreement. My understanding of the negotiations that were conducted was that the Liberal opposition staffers were some of the most militant unionised work force in the building. There was certainly talk of industrial disputation should this government not provide them with not only adequate pay rises but significant improvements in conditions as well.
So we need to put it in perspective. When Mr Mulcahy is talking about productivity savings, I suggest he speak to his own staff about productivity savings and how they are going to apply this wonderful new framework being sought by the federal government into their own workplaces here. Are they going to trade away all the conditions they have
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