Page 826 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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Let us see whether there is any substance to this fine piece of rhetoric which says that the Government has failed to implement micro-economic reform measures. I commend to members who take an interest in ACTEW, an authority that for the first time under the reform agenda of this Labor Government will be coming before the Assembly's Estimates Committee to allow members to question the chief executive - - -
Mr De Domenico: Kicking and screaming.
MR CONNOLLY: Kicking and screaming? I announced this of my own volition. You lot did not even have the gumption to think of it. Mr Moore at least thought of this issue and made some public statements. The local Liberal Party, as usual, was slumbering away, snoozing in the land of nod. That is your approach to management. That is what happened in the 18 months you were in government. It was a lazy period of government. It did not achieve reforms on this issue. It was Mr Moore who came up with the suggestion that ACTEW come before the Estimates Committee - a suggestion that found some favour with us - and we have introduced it.
If members want to get into the facts of the matter rather than this fine rhetoric about corporatisation, I commend to them a visit to the library and a study of a document published by the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, "Performance Indicators 1987-88 to 1990-91". It is a survey of the comparative efficiencies of every State and Territory in Australia in relation to the performance of their electricity authorities. We should bear in mind, of course, that the ACT is a small jurisdiction and in these types of surveys we usually come out pretty poorly. You would expect the ACT to fit between the Northern Territory and Tasmania, because that is our population figure, in terms of the number of customers per employee. We often hear that the problem with ACTEW is that it has too many workers - presumably we should sack a few.
Mr Westende let the cat out of that bag by saying that one of the benefits of corporatisation would be a reduction in the number of unions. We are moving in that direction. We are getting talks going between all the unions in ACTEW and ACTEW management about single bargaining arrangements, reducing the number of unions within the authority and having an enterprise bargaining-type structure. Those talks are progressing with the TLC, with all the unions. We are making progress on that.
His other suggestion was to reduce the work force. That would suggest that there are too many workers in ACTEW and that we should be sacking some people. In terms of customers per employee, the figures are: New South Wales 114, the Northern Territory 67, Queensland 141, South Australia 146, Tasmania 61, Victoria 123, Western Australia 132, and the ACT 140. So we are up with the best of them in terms of the number of customers per employee - an efficient organisation. Turning to the productivity of ACTEW, the figures for the number of gigawatts distributed per employee are: New South Wales 2.2, the Northern Territory 1.4, Queensland doing very well at 2.6, South Australia 1.8, Tasmania 2.3, Victoria 2, Western Australia 1.9, and the ACT 2.7 - the most efficient again.
Let us look at outage time, because that is a very relevant factor. It shows how well a service is being delivered to the customer. We all take it for granted in this Territory that if the power goes out in a storm there will be some ACTEW blokes
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