Page 219 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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MADAM SPEAKER: Having listened to it now, I believe that you are asking for something on which a committee has deliberated, and a committee's deliberations are in confidence until the report of that committee's deliberations is published.
MR MOORE: Certainly, Madam Speaker; but the point is that the presiding member does have the prerogative to respond. If she decides that she does not want to respond, that is her prerogative.
Mr Kaine: I would like to take a point of order, Madam Speaker. In question time, I do not think Mr Moore has the right to debate such an issue and to use up question time. If he wants to debate it, there is a time later today when he can do so.
MADAM SPEAKER: I think we will rule that question out of order.
ACTEW - Corporatisation
MR HUMPHRIES: My question is to Mr Connolly, in his capacity as the Minister responsible for ACT Electricity and Water. I refer to the micro-economic reform agenda of his Victorian colleague Mrs Kirner, who has recently announced that State power and water utilities will be corporatised. I ask the Minister: Why is it that his socialist colleagues in Victoria are quite happy to take a decision to corporatise electricity and water utilities, while he flatly refuses to travel the same sensible path? Is there any difference between Victorian institutions and our own ACT electricity and water utility?
Ms Follett: They are a generator, for one thing. There is a bit of a difference.
MR HUMPHRIES: What is it about micro-economic reform that sends the Government into a frenzied lather of opposition?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, the local Liberals seem to be obsessed today with what is going on in Victoria. Given the woefulness of the Victorian Liberal Opposition, perhaps this lot would do better. But we are not in Victoria; we are in Canberra. Mr Humphries asked: Is there any difference between ACTEW and the Victorian position? The Chief Minister very quickly interjected that there is a slight difference, in that they have a massive power generation facility, which we do not have. ACTEW operates as a distributor of power which it purchases.
Madam Speaker, ACTEW is an organisation which is extraordinarily efficient. In a publication late last year the Australian Association of Power Authorities - I think that is the correct name of the body - the umbrella body that covers power generation and reticulation authorities in Australia, provided an efficiency chart which showed that ACTEW delivers power to the consumer in Canberra at the lowest price in Australia and that ACTEW's rate of return to government, the return that government gets on its investment, is the highest in Australia. That was based on the previous year's ACTEW budget and, as members would be aware, last year the ACTEW dividend was increased. So, not only does it continue to supply power to the householder at the lowest rate in Australia but also its dividend - its return to investors, the ratepayers - is higher than anywhere else in Australia. It is a very efficient body.
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