Dr LIM - 2005-05-04
You were recently dragged, kicking and screaming, to settle the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement with the Australian Education Union NT. Over the course of six weeks, you were forced to partly meet the offer made by the Country Liberal Party to Territory teachers. You admitted that the EBA will cost you $70m, and I will read from the Centralian Advocate published yesterday:
Nowhere in the papers of Budget 2005-06 have you shown where the $70m will come from. Is it the case that your education budget has a big hole because of your unfunded EBA settlement?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Greatorex for his question and his breathtaking boldness in climbing to his feet on this issue because he has form: he was caught telling porkies. He was caught out by Julia Christensen on ABC Radio telling big, fat porkies!
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: Telling big, fat porkies! She said: ‘But, Dr Lim, you said last night you didn’t have anything to do with this’. ‘No, I said the CLP didn’t have anything to do with it’. ‘Are you not the CLP?’ ‘No, I’m not the CLP’.
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: Goodness me! You have form, running around a discredited document that the AEU would not go within a mile of because it stunk and was full of inaccuracies. You clutched it to your little breast and ran around Alice Springs distributing it to as many households and letterboxes as you could, all designed - and it is not funny because this was a sinister, underhanded attempt to discredit the government and the AEU which were going through the proper process of an enterprise bargaining agreement to be undermined by this little grub here, and putting lies out and about the electorate in order to destabilise negotiations.
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Madam Speaker, you have ruled that the word ‘grub’ is unparliamentary.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, withdraw that word.
Mr STIRLING: I withdraw, Madam Speaker. Sinister and underhanded remain, and the porkies!
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Minster! Just settle down.
Mr STIRLING: You did hand out the document or you did not hand out the document? The evening before you did not, the next morning you did. I assume you did, along with your little helpers.
Madam Speaker, it is $55m - if I used $70m yesterday with the Centralian Advocate, my apologies - $55m over the next three years, and not …
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: If they understood budgets they would realise that it is not all additional to the budget. Now, why would it be all additional to the budget? Because any prudent government, maybe they did not used to do it because they were not very prudent when it came to financial management, but Treasury is well used to building into forward estimates a percentage to carry forward potential wage and salary increases arising out of EBAs. It is a modest figure. They inflate 3% for wages and salaries. To put any other figure may lead to an expectation that the wage or salary increase is going to be somewhat larger than is achieved through the enterprise bargaining agreement.
There is already funding there, so you have to drop that out of the extra cost as well. The additional cost to the budget is around $8m per annum and, of course, additional funding is set aside for that amount so there will be no black hole. It is in the forward estimates going forward for the life of this agreement.
I go back to the very unhealthy role played by the opposition in trying to undermine the proper negotiations of the day between the education union and the Public Service Commissioner as the employer: unhelpful in the extreme, especially when discredited documents full of inaccuracies are circulated by the shadow minister for Education for political gain. He did not care if schools were closed. He did not care that students might lose out on valuable days of education. He did not care about the potential disruption for parents in closing schools. They were out there, trying to incite the teachers to further industrial action when we were trying to settle with them.
I am delighted with the outcome we have and so are teachers. They have voted unanimously in Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek thus far, and I would expect further very healthy pro-votes in the process because teachers recognise it is an excellent outcome. They realise that this government recognises their value as teachers, and we are going to pay them accordingly as opposed to these blokes.
- Education minister Syd Stirling said that the government’s new offer would cost an estimated $70m.
Nowhere in the papers of Budget 2005-06 have you shown where the $70m will come from. Is it the case that your education budget has a big hole because of your unfunded EBA settlement?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Greatorex for his question and his breathtaking boldness in climbing to his feet on this issue because he has form: he was caught telling porkies. He was caught out by Julia Christensen on ABC Radio telling big, fat porkies!
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: Telling big, fat porkies! She said: ‘But, Dr Lim, you said last night you didn’t have anything to do with this’. ‘No, I said the CLP didn’t have anything to do with it’. ‘Are you not the CLP?’ ‘No, I’m not the CLP’.
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: Goodness me! You have form, running around a discredited document that the AEU would not go within a mile of because it stunk and was full of inaccuracies. You clutched it to your little breast and ran around Alice Springs distributing it to as many households and letterboxes as you could, all designed - and it is not funny because this was a sinister, underhanded attempt to discredit the government and the AEU which were going through the proper process of an enterprise bargaining agreement to be undermined by this little grub here, and putting lies out and about the electorate in order to destabilise negotiations.
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Madam Speaker, you have ruled that the word ‘grub’ is unparliamentary.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, withdraw that word.
Mr STIRLING: I withdraw, Madam Speaker. Sinister and underhanded remain, and the porkies!
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Minster! Just settle down.
Mr STIRLING: You did hand out the document or you did not hand out the document? The evening before you did not, the next morning you did. I assume you did, along with your little helpers.
Madam Speaker, it is $55m - if I used $70m yesterday with the Centralian Advocate, my apologies - $55m over the next three years, and not …
Members interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: If they understood budgets they would realise that it is not all additional to the budget. Now, why would it be all additional to the budget? Because any prudent government, maybe they did not used to do it because they were not very prudent when it came to financial management, but Treasury is well used to building into forward estimates a percentage to carry forward potential wage and salary increases arising out of EBAs. It is a modest figure. They inflate 3% for wages and salaries. To put any other figure may lead to an expectation that the wage or salary increase is going to be somewhat larger than is achieved through the enterprise bargaining agreement.
There is already funding there, so you have to drop that out of the extra cost as well. The additional cost to the budget is around $8m per annum and, of course, additional funding is set aside for that amount so there will be no black hole. It is in the forward estimates going forward for the life of this agreement.
I go back to the very unhealthy role played by the opposition in trying to undermine the proper negotiations of the day between the education union and the Public Service Commissioner as the employer: unhelpful in the extreme, especially when discredited documents full of inaccuracies are circulated by the shadow minister for Education for political gain. He did not care if schools were closed. He did not care that students might lose out on valuable days of education. He did not care about the potential disruption for parents in closing schools. They were out there, trying to incite the teachers to further industrial action when we were trying to settle with them.
I am delighted with the outcome we have and so are teachers. They have voted unanimously in Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek thus far, and I would expect further very healthy pro-votes in the process because teachers recognise it is an excellent outcome. They realise that this government recognises their value as teachers, and we are going to pay them accordingly as opposed to these blokes.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016