Assembly.

Shadow Development and Opportunity Minister Allan Marshall said:"We tried to tell the Minister that more consultation was needed and maybe he has learned a lesson that consultation throughout the community is surely the way forward,'' he said.

He accused Mr. Lister of having his tongue engaged before his brain was in gear when he said he was not interested in what the Opposition had to say after the Senate defeated the CURE regulations.

Mr. Marshall alleged that the "recurring theme'' at the public meetings Mr.

Lister subsequently held was immigration and expatriates "taking'' Bermudians' jobs.

"The people attending those meetings really thought the CURE regulations were going to address the imbalance they perceived with immigration and work permits. Boy, were they disappointed.'' He suggested that a lot of black Bermudians, who felt frustrated and discriminated, might be directing it toward expats. The solution was more education, training and resources directed toward Bermudians.

Mr. Marshall said it was astonishing that Mr. Lister had said he was not interested in looking at gender in the regulations when women make up more than 50 percent of the workforce.

Mr. Lister interjected that he did not say he was not interested, but had decided to deal with race first because "there was so much heat''.

Mr. Marshall said it was especially important to look at women's issues since CURE received more complaints about employers sacking pregnant women than it did about race.

"It is the largest complaint in our society, far outweighing racial complaints, but the Minister is not taking it in.

"Government has given paternity leave to civil servants while women are still being discriminated against. Surely all women should be put on an equal footing. The Minister should be ashamed of himself.'' Mr. Marshall claimed if racial equality was the important issue, all companies, not just those with ten or more employees, should be included.

He attacked Mr. Lister for not dropping form four in the regulations, which require details on hiring, firing and promotions.

He said that should apply only to those companies proved to be "out of the mix''.

"Surely form four is creating a guilty until proven innocent tactic and that can't be right.

"They all do form three, so why punish those companies doing the right thing and forcing them to complete form four?'' He said the regulations would be "unique to Bermuda'' and accused Mr. Lister of being "a little misleading'' in the comparisons he made with other countries' race reporting rules.

He said a survey he did of professional businessmen on the Island with companies in the United States showed that even though the US had equal opportunity legislation, they would "go nuts'' if Bermuda's regulations were forced on them.

Companies with contracts with state and federal governments had to have equal opportunity programmes to qualify for the business.

"Nowhere else in the world are companies in the private sector required to permit these types of forms, particularly form four,'' he said.

He called on Government to follow the example of some US states by ensuring Government's workforce complied with CURE, then requiring private companies wishing to do business with Government to meet the same standards.

"The view is that the Minister should ease up. Drop form four until it is absolutely necessary.'' Mr. Marshall said legislation was already in place to ensure equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work.

The UBP's approach would be to change the law if it needed changing, but the best way was to offer incentives to the corporate community to change themselves.

There should be incentives for companies who are promoting Bermudians, promoting diversity and investing in training.

"Where Government attempts social or humanitarian goals, incentives are the best carrot.'' Robinson defends bill as `not a sledgehammer' St. George's North MP Delaey Robinson said progress toward eradicating racism had been extremely slow. It was more than a 100 years since the Emancipation Act of 1834 to desegregation in 1959.

Those who still believed in discrimination had to be "pulled kicking and screaming into the 20th century''.

"It has taken a long time to convince them discrimination is detrimental to the Country and it looks as though we still have that task ahead, and there are still people out there who still hold with the status quo.'' He said it was "absolutely abominable'' that, according to 1991 figures, one group who did not complete a high school education earned more in management than another group who had college degrees. That should "outrage'' every person in Bermuda.

"That is a stark situation that has to be addressed. The Minister is not taking a sledgehammer. These regulations are small potatoes compared to other jurisdictions.

"If we had to do what other businesses had to do in other jurisdictions, our businesses would really have good reason to shout about bureaucracy and added cost of doing business.

"The vast majority of people want much more than these CURE regulations brought to the table. The public are surprised the CURE regulations do so little.

"All we are trying to do is measure to see if there is a problem, what is the size of the problem, and what do we have to do.

"If that pertains to a family, surely it must pertain to a workplace where significant numbers have been discriminated against for a number of years.

That becomes costly to human beings.'' He said he could not understand the implication from the Opposition that the CURE principles should become mandatory.

"That begs the obvious quesgood business practices in hiring, promoting and training Bermudians, both black and white, male and female.'' He said the companies would be centres of excellence for Bermudian human resources development.

He suggested that the incentives which could be awarded to such companies could include fast-track immigration procedures for times when they have demonstrated that they need to hire non-Bermudians.

"We want to provide opportunities for Bermudians rather than just count heads. We might even be seen as an example that other countries would wish to emulate.'' And he said Bermudians were "looking for a hand up, not a hand-out'' and that they would rather be hired on the basis of their intelligence and ability rather than their race or gender.

Warwick West MP Dr. Ewart Brown said he was tired of still talking about race and CURE.

"It demonstrates how far we really are behind,'' he said.

"The Opposition is supporting all of the apple pie objectives of CURE that we all agree on, but hasn't said anything about compensatory steps.'' Dr. Brown used the metaphor of a 400-metre race in which two people were competing, one with his arms tied.

"If we untie that person's arm 200 metres in and continue the race, it is not a level playing field,'' he said.

And he said CURE regulations were designed to detect the degree of compliance to equal hiring practices within companies.

"I don't know why anyone would be against something that detects racist practices,'' he said.

"Voluntary compliance doesn't work. Bermudians are tired of hearing a lot of talk on this issue. They want to see action. We will support and fuel their aspirations.'' Environment Minister Arthur Hodgson said he was also tired of the subject.

"For the past 400 years, we've been talking about the race problem,'' he said.

"We've always been finding reasons and excuses for perpetuating it. Bermuda stands at the threshold of being an example, but we aren't.'' And he said the Island could alleviate its tourism problems if it could achieve racial harmony.

"There would be enough tourists who would come here to see how two races can live in harmony,'' he said.

But when he suggested that the UBP did not want the CURE legislation, Opposition Leader Pamela Gordon accused Mr. Hodgson of misleading the House.

"The United Bermuda Party supports the CURE legislation,'' she said.

"We are in favour of most of the resolutions. It is the form four that we are concerned about.'' And she pointed to statistics from the 1991 census that indicated that whites without a high school diploma were earning more than blacks with a college or university degree.

"We all know about Front Street,'' she said.

"Back then, people went into the family business without necessarily getting tertiary education.

"Is (CURE) going to correct the anomaly? It will assist in the collection of data. But what will the Minister do with the data? This is not the fix-all for the problem.'' Ms Gordon echoed concerns voiced by Mr. Marshall that only companies with more than ten employees would be subject to scrutiny by CURE.

Mr. Lister responded to the criticism, saying voluntary compliance was not working.

"We have to get the numbers,'' he said.

Alan Marshall Delaey Robinson