Page 832 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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Mr Kaine: He would be stepping into the nineteenth century.
MR DE DOMENICO: That is right. It is ironic that this MPI has come up today, because I think it was at about this time last year - and I am sure Mr Kaine will correct me if I am wrong - that the Labor Government took office. It is about a year that this Government has been in power. One of the first things the Labor Party did when it came into power was to say quite categorically that there would be no more corporatisation, no more privatisation. I genuinely think Mr Connolly does not believe that, but he had no choice in the matter. It was not Mr Connolly who made that decision. There was a special committee - Connolly's faceless men, let us call them. The committee said, "Mr Minister, no way, Jose, will we want privatisation or corporatisation". Not people elected by the people of the ACT but some Labor Party apparatchiks from who knows where said to Mr Connolly, "No more corporatisation".
Mr Connolly is well aware that many members of the ACTEW board are very much in favour of corporatisation. I will not name names because it might affect their position on the board next time around, but the majority of the ACTEW board - - -
Mr Kaine: They are all gone now.
MR DE DOMENICO: They are all gone, are they? They are all in favour of corporatisation, but not Mr Connolly. He said, "We are so efficient". He showed us colour slides, colour photography - all sorts of things. The bottom line, though, is this: If you are so efficient, why are you increasing prices so much?
Mr Moore was quite right when he suggested that it is taxing by stealth. If we have a good look at the ACTEW annual reports, the figure was $4m two or three years ago, there was a once-off $8m extra on that, taking it to $12m, and then, suddenly, last year it was $19m. Heaven knows how much is going to come out of it.
Mr Kaine: $25m.
MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Kaine says $25m. Mr Connolly is saying to the people of the ACT, "We have not been able to manage our budget as well as we would like to have, so the best way out of this is to make you all pay extra electricity and water charges. Let us hide it. Although we have the cleanest water supply in the country, let us rip off another $25 per household to make it even cleaner still". Next year perhaps the river will flow upstream, like Mr Fraser wanted it to do many years ago.
Mr Connolly said to the people of the ACT, "We cannot manage the budget here - or we do not know whether we can or not because we still have to go out and ask the community whether we are going to manage it right or manage it wrong. So we will rip it off you, but we will not call it taxation by stealth. We have been lambasting people like Dr Hewson and all those Liberal rednecks up on the hill and on the other side of the house, but let us do exactly the same thing they were going to do. It may make eminent sense because we cannot corporatise". They cannot privatise because Horrie Hoyle and Bib and Bub behind him, whom he mentioned before, said, "You cannot do it, mate. You might be right and it might be what needs to be done in the ACT, but we are the manifesto-ites of the Labor Party and we tell you that you cannot do it". Mr Connolly, being in a minority
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