Page 2884 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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agencies, and a total appropriation of just over $62 million. The Chief Minister directorate has undergone restructure over the last 12 months which did include the incorporation of the Treasury directorate into a single central agency. This was to improve the strategic advice that is provided to the government. I think that the people involved in the restructure—that is, staff from both Chief Minister’s and Treasury—should be congratulated for the professionalism with which they have handled those changes.
Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate plays an important strategic role working across the ACT public service on whole-of-government issues such as workforce culture and capability, industrial relations, learning and development, communications, transparency, ethics and accountability. It also, of course, looks at issues like workers compensation across the service as well. These are all very important whole-of-government programs. I note that there has not been any focus on those by the members opposite. Mr Hanson chose to spend his time more on the EBA and Skywhale, which, in the context of the appropriation, were a very, very small part of the Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate funding. Indeed, Skywhale was actually a part of previous appropriation in the centenary program that had been passed through this place without a great deal of comment.
I go back to the EBA issue. I think that the people of the ACT expect the government to be responsible around our negotiations with unions. Just because I am a member of a union and previously worked for a union, I do not think, therefore, that you give the union everything they seek or they want. Everyone who has been involved in enterprise bargaining arrangements understands that it does involve an offer being made, a rejection from the unions and then negotiations to try and resolve it to the parties’ satisfaction.
That is the stage we are at now. We were very clear in the election campaign around the fact that we wanted to preserve jobs, and we do want to preserve jobs. That was our commitment in the election campaign. We were clear about it. The unions were supportive of that approach. But we did not say that we would pay over and above an EBA outcome that we can afford and preserve jobs. I think anyone pretending to run that line now is being disingenuous.
I would say—and we have said this to our union friends that we work with in making sure that we are ensuring public servants are well paid and respected for the job that they have done—that since 2003 there have been significant improvements to workplace conditions and workplace salaries through the cooperation and collaboration of the ACT Labor government and the unions. Indeed, I think the last time there was strike action, if I use the nurses as an example, was before the first term of the Stanhope Labor government. That is how long it has been, because we have been able to negotiate and work with unions to deliver particular outcomes.
We have, for example, significantly increased maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks. There have been significant improvements in personal leave, in carers’ leave and in vacation care programs. This is all designed to ensure that public servants who do work for less than the commonwealth are getting commensurate or better conditions than the commonwealth public service.
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