Page 1098 - Week 04 - Thursday, 1 April 1993
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Mr De Domenico: We have not thought about that. Perhaps Mr Connolly has been set up.
MRS CARNELL: Maybe he has been. This would seem to me to be a win-win-win outcome, as I think Mr De Domenico adequately said. The Government won because its increased dividend was more secure. ACTEW won because it would be able to fund the dividend without becoming a gross borrower, and if ACTEW becomes a gross borrower its capacity in the medium and long term both to service its debt and to pay increasing dividends to the ACT Government becomes almost non-existent. Importantly, the union won, with its members getting a better deal, which I would have thought the Labor Government would have been very pleased about. Certainly, the Liberal Party is very pleased about that.
One would have thought this would have been viewed as a triumph for labour market reform, something Mr Keating and Mr Kelty and all the people Mr De Domenico referred to speak about frequently; but no, not in the ACT, not with the Labor Left. This Left-dominated Labor Government are not interested in micro-economic reform. They are interested only in control and stamping out initiative.
Mr De Domenico: The pragmatic Left are interested, though.
MRS CARNELL: Yes, but the ones who actually have the numbers are the problem, Mr De Domenico. We have already seen this with Mr Berry's move to decorporatise the ACTTAB. The ACTTAB, similar to ACTEW, has embraced micro-economic reform, has become more efficient and innovative, and is returning a sizeable dividend to the ACT Government. It sounds very similar to ACTEW. The TAB has also improved its customer service and expanded its client base. Again, that is not dissimilar. Again, one would have thought the Government would have been congratulating the ACTTAB board for their very real contribution to the ACT economy. But no, Mr Berry is going to sack the board, decorporatise it, and make the TAB another arm of government.
Madam Speaker, I say again that Mr Berry and his left-wing comrades, and I use the word advisedly, seem to have one aim, and that is to control and to destroy initiative, even at the expense, in this case particularly, of efficiency and productivity. This has been shown again in Mr Berry's handling of this current ACTEW-EPU dispute. Mr Berry's left-wing ideology has once again let down the people of the ACT. If electricity supplies are interrupted, the blame must be sheeted home to where it is deserved, and that is to Mr Berry, Mr Berry's left-wing colleagues, and the ACT Labor Government, because Ms Follett does not have the guts to intervene.
MADAM SPEAKER: The discussion has concluded.
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