Parliament House Staff Enterprise Agreement

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (14:50): My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer advise the chamber the reason behind ruling out back pay for staff employed under the Parliament (Joint Services) Act 1985, in fact the staff who keep the building running, while approving back pay for ministerial staff? Will the Treasurer categorically rule out no back pay as a negotiation tactic with other government enterprise bargaining agreements?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:50): I am happy to take the question on notice. I am not sure what he means and perhaps outside the chamber the member could explain what he means by 'back pay'. If he is alluding to the fact that in some way the government as an employer owes people money and they have not paid them and they need to be paid back pay, then I would be interested to know if he could give me further details of that particular claim and I will be happy to have them investigated.

In relation to ministerial staff, up until now the government has adopted the same process that the former Labor government adopted for 16 years, which was essentially that executives were evidently for some reason in the Public Service given whatever their pay rise was generally some time towards the end of the calendar year. Through some convention—no law—the former government then applied the same level of salary increase to the broad ministerial staff. Some staff were given more significant increases than the average, or the normal, but generally that was the rule of thumb that was used.

When we came to government our legal advice was that, through the structure of the contracts that ministerial staff had, a similar process was required to be followed. It is unlikely that we will continue that process in the future as new contracts are structured for ministerial staff. I would hope also that in relation to executives the convention of the former Labor government would not need to be followed as well; that is, if the government of the day decides to make a pay increase to executives it would be whenever the government of the day makes that particular decision rather than, in essence, making it retrospective to an earlier date. We did inherit some of the practices of the former government and we hope that we will be able to improve some of those practices as they relate to executives and ministerial staff.

In relation to the parliamentary staff and the issues that the honourable member has raised, as I said, if he is prepared to give me any further claims about back pay not being paid then I am prepared to have them investigated. If what he is actually talking about is whether or not future salary increases are made retrospective as opposed to back pay, then there is a current enterprise bargaining negotiation going on between representatives of the government and representatives of employees. I think, as a former prominent union heavy or union boss, he would understand that enterprise bargaining negotiations generally are best not conducted in the public arena in relation to the details unless we get to the stage where there is an inevitable breakdown.