Enterprise Agreements

The Hon. B.R. HOOD (14:42): It would be lovely. I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Industrial Relations regarding enterprise bargaining agreements.

Leave granted.

The Hon. B.R. HOOD: The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation will rally outside The QEH today demanding a fairer pay deal from the government, committing to escalating action if no respectful offer is made by tomorrow. The Minister for Industrial Relations committed to this chamber earlier in the year that the government was negotiating in good faith, yet the nursing and midwifery union is extremely surprised and disappointed by these negotiations and have reported that they haven't had a response to any one of the other conditions that their members have put forward. My questions to the minister are:

1. Did the minister communicate to the Treasurer prior to the recent budget regarding the need for additional funds to be made available for a raft of enterprise agreements he should have known were up for negotiation?

2. Is the minister hamstrung by a government which has spent all the taxpayer money on pet projects instead of on our frontline workers?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:43): I thank the honourable member for his question. I am happy to repeat what I have said in here a number of times. We will, distinctly unlike the honourable member's party when they were in government, who completely refused to negotiate in anything that nearly approached good faith—they put in arbitrary limits on things like whether they would even contemplate back pay for many, many years for our ambulance officers, for instance. We are not doing that.

We negotiate in a very, very different environment than how the honourable member's party negotiated. Let's remember—and I am happy to repeat it again—the sorts of things the honourable member's party said about unions when they were in government. They derided union leaders, thought that it was a dirty word, thought that what they did wasn't worthwhile. That is completely the opposite of how we see it.

We will continue negotiations as we have, as is evidenced by the EBs we have come to have agreements with in government already that do one thing very differently than what the Hon. Ben Hood's party did. What ours have done is give real wage rises. What the Hon. Ben Hood's party has done, and what he seems to be very proud of, is real wage cuts. Liberal real wage cuts.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: They won't negotiate in good faith. Labor will. Real wage rises and will negotiate in good faith. A huge difference.