Page 2977 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007

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to put Mr Gentleman back into the chair’s seat so that he can monitor this stuff. After two years, they have not found a single thing wrong with the system. It then goes on to say that:

The Committee recommends that the ACT Government lobby the Commonwealth Government to ensure that comprehensive data on Australian Workplace Agreements is gathered by the Workplace Authority and made available.

Well, it has been gathered and it has been made available. It has been studied; it has been hung, drawn and quartered; it has been hung up; it has been stripped down. So—wow!—one, we want to monitor, two, we want more data. What have you been doing for two years, Mr Gentleman? Well, we know you have not been doing much, because you only met for 14 hours to hear what the public had to say. Then what does the committee want? It wants to monitor, then it wants more data. What is recommendation 3? Here is the killer:

The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review the Discrimination 1999 (ACT) and the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT) with a view to strengthening the objectives to include family responsibilities and economic, social and cultural rights.

So there we are—20 grand as the chair is the allowance that came with this position. That is the bill; that is the allowance that Mr Gentleman has picked up, and what are the three recommendations of the committee? Firstly, it wants to monitor; secondly, it wants more data; thirdly, it wants to have a review. Is that not just so symptomatic of the ACT government? Is that not just a revelation of the Stanhope approach to things? If you do not have an answer, monitor, get data, review. This is a sham; it is a farce; it is an absolute debacle. It is a disgrace to the committee system, and it disgraces the Assembly. If Mr Gentleman had any sense, he would give the money back.

MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (5.34): Mr Speaker, when this report came out today, I was waiting for a powerful document in the context of the current political climate in this country. I have to say, if I were a member of the Labor Party—as you are, Mr Speaker, with a long history in industrial relations matters—I think I would be hanging my head with shame and embarrassment if this were the best we could produce. As Mr Smyth has pointed out, this is a lightweight and disappointing exercise, and the committee chair owes this Assembly an explanation as to why something that went on for so long and cost the taxpayers more than $20,000 in chairman’s fees ended up with something of this calibre. I have only been here for three years, like my colleagues Mr Seselja and Ms Porter, but I have to say that this is one of the most ordinary reports that I think has ever been presented in this place. If you go to the dissenting report of Mrs Burke it is worth looking at some of those recommendations, and I will come to them in a moment.

This report was presented, of course, in the background of a political landscape that we were told would be the ruination of this country. It has its origins, indeed, back in the mid-90s when Stephen Smith, the then federal Labor shadow industrial relations minister, said:


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