Public Sector Enterprise Agreements

The Hon. B.R. HOOD (14:34): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector regarding upcoming enterprise bargaining negotiations across the public sector.

Leave granted.

The Hon. B.R. HOOD: Within the next 12 months there are multiple essential services and medical public sector enterprise bargaining agreements that will expire. These include nursing and midwifery, SA Ambulance Service and the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service. My questions to the minister are:

1. Has the government begun negotiations with these groups, and if so, when?

2. What are the government's contingency plans, if any, for these workforces should the negotiations be prolonged and industrial action is taken?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:35): There are, as the honourable member points out, a number of industrial agreements that are up for negotiation during the course of this year. I think for nearly all of those some form of negotiation has started. There are a number of officials within the industrial relations and policy branch of government who conduct these negotiations on behalf of government and who are the lead for the negotiations in the parameters that are set down by government in those negotiations.

One thing that we certainly are doing is negotiating in a genuine, open and bona fide way. We don't have any preconceived constraints. I think the last government had policies that they set down, such as no back pay, so even when agreements had expired it was a stated non-negotiable of the former government that—as happened with the Ambulance Employees Association agreement which was some years past the last increase in pay—the former government refused any possibility of back pay for all those years that back pay was missed.

That is certainly not something that we have taken as a policy position in this government. One of the first industrial agreements that we negotiated and settled on coming to government was with the very hardworking ambulance officers in South Australia, and that included back pay for the years that they were denied that by the former government. So we will continue to have those good faith negotiations with unions.

As I have said, there are officers within the department who conduct negotiations, but certainly I know that myself, the Premier and in health areas the Minister for Health and Wellbeing have our doors open and regularly meet and speak with union officials who represent many of these hardworking public sector employees.