Mr BARRETT - 2014-08-21
It appears there is a great deal of misinformation about the EBA negotiations currently taking place, which is being peddled by the members opposite. I listened to the sheer vitriol for hours yesterday. Can you please provide an accurate update on the EBA negotiations and dispel Labor’s many myths and vitriolic discourse?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, so often we sit in this House listening to members opposite preaching things like industrial harmony, and saying all manner of problems are to be sheeted home to this government. They make utterances I would like to refer to, but unfortunately my words would be considered unparliamentary, so I cannot call them liars.
The first assertion they continually make is that it is the government’s responsibility to intervene on the EBA for the paramedics. The paramedics of the Northern Territory who provide services through St John Ambulance are not employed by the Northern Territory government, yet they continue to perpetrate this misinformation that somehow, because the work is contracted by the Northern Territory government, we must enter the EBA negotiations.
To follow that logic to its obvious conclusion, anybody who works for the Northern Territory government is, by the estimation of the members opposite, an employee of the Northern Territory government. All of a sudden we have to insert ourselves into, perhaps, the Sitzler employment environment so we can sort out that EBA as well. That bodes not at all well for the industrial relations in the future of the Northern Territory under a future Northern Territory Labor government.
Yesterday the opposition said our prison officers, we hope, are closer to resolving their EBA. Again, they accepted the 3% offer over four years as a gesture in good faith negotiations. ‘You refused’, they said to me. This is not true; the offer for the prison officers was formally made on Friday 8 August and a response is not expected back until today. I am hoping we will step forward through our EBA negotiations. I have taken the time to meet the NT Prison Officers Association and discuss this with them.
Once again, it is utterly untrue. These people promote industrial harmony in the same way that Judas Iscariot promoted Christianity. It is not acceptable that they continue to walk around the workplaces of the Northern Territory stirring up trouble and problems when they relish industrial disharmony. All they are interested in is saying they are the champion of the worker, but through their processes – and unfortunately through some of their union mates – the last people they act for are union members. They look after their own Labor political interests ...
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your time has expired.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, so often we sit in this House listening to members opposite preaching things like industrial harmony, and saying all manner of problems are to be sheeted home to this government. They make utterances I would like to refer to, but unfortunately my words would be considered unparliamentary, so I cannot call them liars.
The first assertion they continually make is that it is the government’s responsibility to intervene on the EBA for the paramedics. The paramedics of the Northern Territory who provide services through St John Ambulance are not employed by the Northern Territory government, yet they continue to perpetrate this misinformation that somehow, because the work is contracted by the Northern Territory government, we must enter the EBA negotiations.
To follow that logic to its obvious conclusion, anybody who works for the Northern Territory government is, by the estimation of the members opposite, an employee of the Northern Territory government. All of a sudden we have to insert ourselves into, perhaps, the Sitzler employment environment so we can sort out that EBA as well. That bodes not at all well for the industrial relations in the future of the Northern Territory under a future Northern Territory Labor government.
Yesterday the opposition said our prison officers, we hope, are closer to resolving their EBA. Again, they accepted the 3% offer over four years as a gesture in good faith negotiations. ‘You refused’, they said to me. This is not true; the offer for the prison officers was formally made on Friday 8 August and a response is not expected back until today. I am hoping we will step forward through our EBA negotiations. I have taken the time to meet the NT Prison Officers Association and discuss this with them.
Once again, it is utterly untrue. These people promote industrial harmony in the same way that Judas Iscariot promoted Christianity. It is not acceptable that they continue to walk around the workplaces of the Northern Territory stirring up trouble and problems when they relish industrial disharmony. All they are interested in is saying they are the champion of the worker, but through their processes – and unfortunately through some of their union mates – the last people they act for are union members. They look after their own Labor political interests ...
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your time has expired.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016