Page 783 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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hoppers suitable for front lift operation. However, at a cost of $1m, expenditure of this magnitude could not be justified to continue to provide a service which can be provided by established private sector operators at a cheaper rate.
Mrs Grassby placed great emphasis on the bad debts owing to the service, claiming that if these were paid in full the service would run at a profit. An examination of the bad debts for the 1990-91 financial year shows that even if all had been paid the service would still not have made a profit. That was another spurious Labor claim. They do not want to know the facts. They just want to make them up as they go along.
Great emphasis was placed by Mrs Grassby on her perception of the government Trade Waste Service being a market stabiliser and therefore helping to keep costs down. To put this view in perspective, we need to look at the history of the government Trade Waste Service. A decision by the ACT Advisory Council that waste collection from commercial premises and private and government schools should be provided on a fee for service basis led to the formation of the government Trade Waste Service in January 1975 as there were no commercial operators in the ACT to provide the service at that time. Since that time, however, four commercial operators have entered the ACT market and competed with the government's Trade Waste Service. I would contend that, while Mrs Grassby's view may have had some relevance in those earlier years, today it has absolutely none.
With the sale of the government's Trade Waste Service, there will still be four commercial operators in the ACT. This is a healthy competitive environment for the industry which should ensure value for money to trade waste customers. There is simply no justification in this situation of competition for further unproductive competition from the government itself. In fact, it was not competitive because the costs were too high.
Reference was also made to the downgrading of the jobs of the current Trade Waste employees. Mrs Grassby claims that the employees raised these concerns with her. I would contend that the employees also raised these concerns with the departmental staff, who have maintained a close liaison with the employees since the announcement of the decision to sell the service. As my colleague Mr Duby indicated in his statement on 19 February 1991, the employees have been provided with advice and counselling in regard to all redeployment and redundancy opportunities, procedures and entitlements. It is simply untrue to say that their concerns were not given proper consideration by the Government. They did not go only to Mrs Grassby; they were dealt with appropriately and properly through Government channels.
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