Page 3613 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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The ACT has the potential to be a model for government in Australia. At least in the ACT we do not end up with the overlap of State and municipal functions. But to achieve this potential we must maximise our strengths, become outcomes orientated, stop empire building, minimise duplication within the ACT government sector, and form a real partnership with the private sector - fascinatingly, Madam Speaker, something that is in the 2020 vision for Canberra.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (8.58): Madam Speaker, I presume that we are debating the statement on the heads of government meeting, rather than 2020. Mrs Carnell may have got the wrong conclusion to the wrong speech. I was stirred to speak in this debate tonight because of the inane comments the Leader of the Opposition was making in relation to micro-economic reform and government trading enterprises in the ACT. Parrot-like, the Liberal Party says, "Competition, privatise, corporatise". It is a view of the world which is ideologically hidebound. It is a view of the world which says that an ideology will solve the problem. Interestingly, that criticism is the criticism that Liberals for years would throw at the Labor Party, but it is perfectly appropriate for us to throw that right back in your face. You are taking a simplistic and ideological view of the world and you are ignoring, or you are unaware of, the massive progress we have been making under this Government in turning around this Territory's trading enterprise sector.
Mrs Carnell: Where is the corporatisation? Where is the competition?
MR CONNOLLY: Mrs Carnell, turning around a trading enterprise and making it more efficient does not necessarily mean corporatising it. Corporatising was really the ideology of the 1980s. In a period through the early to mid 1980s in Australia, in the United States, in Canada, in Britain, we all fell in love with the entrepreneurs. We took the view that the entrepreneurs - the Bonds and the Skases, in the United States the Trumps, in Britain the Canadian property developers who were doing the big East Bank project which has collapsed - were the popular heroes. The view developed in public administration that one had only to ape the methodology of the private sector and magically things would be more efficient. I can recall during the last election campaign putting out a press release referring to Mr Humphries's magic pudding approach to ACTEW; where all you had to do was corporatise ACTEW and, like the magic pudding, it would continue to produce savings and produce dividends and produce money.
Mrs Carnell: Unfortunately, corporatising is not like that.
MR CONNOLLY: Corporatising is not like that, Mrs Carnell. Corporatising merely relates to the form of an enterprise, and the form means absolutely nothing in relation to its efficiency. What is significant, and I think you will read about this in the Canberra Times tomorrow, Mrs Carnell, is a report that has been released only this week looking at electricity and water authorities across Australia. That report finds that the two authorities that have done the best in terms of reducing costs to consumers are ACTEW and the Hunter Water Corporation.
Mr De Domenico: You would do a heck of a lot better if you corporatised.
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