Page 3614 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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MR CONNOLLY: There we go. We almost had it there; but, once again, the ideology came in. The point is that the Hunter Water Corporation is held out, by those who take this simplistic view that corporatisation solves everyone's problems, as the model of a corporatised water authority because it was the first to be corporatised and it has gone the furthest. What is significant is that we retreated from your policy of corporatisation for ACTEW.
Mrs Carnell: Why?
MR CONNOLLY: Because we thought this was ideological claptrap. It was a nonsensical exercise to corporatise a natural monopoly supplier. However, when you had a government owned business which was competing with the private sector alongside four or five other identical businesses, there was no problem to corporatisation, so we maintained corporatising that type of enterprise. But a state monopoly, a monopoly supplier of essential services such as ACTEW, we thought there was no point in corporatising. It would have caused a lot of morale problems, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of cost, because a lot of consultants and management advisers get paid a lot of money for running around the country advising people on corporatising and a lot of lawyers make a lot of money from creating new corporate forms. But does it make any difference to the efficiency of the organisation? Not a whit, because ACTEW has performed the best.
Mrs Carnell: Did ACTEW want to be corporatised?
MR CONNOLLY: The then ACTEW board, the majority appointed by you lot, did.
Mr De Domenico: What about the current ACTEW board?
MR CONNOLLY: The now ACTEW board does not. The now ACTEW board is at one with Government policy, Mr De Domenico. The Hunter Water Corporation, held out as the model of what you can do with corporatisation, did well; but ACTEW did better. A statutory authority did better.
In relation to public transport, the report that was published by the Advance Bank, commissioned by Access Economics - who are not well-known supporters of the Labor Party, without suggesting that they have any particular political point of view - showed that the only government that had turned around the ever increasing ACTION deficit was this one. Our runs are on the board. We are achieving a $10m reduction of the ACTION deficit over a three-year period. That amounts to about a 20 per cent reduction. The Industry Commission, and I have criticised them publicly before, said inanely, "Not fast enough". Mrs Carnell tonight says inanely, "Not fast enough". Mrs Carnell, you show me a public transport authority that has reduced its recurrent cost to the taxpayer by 20 per cent over three years. I challenge you to do that.
Mr Westende: Victoria - $426 per family per annum this year.
MR CONNOLLY: That is what the Victorian Liberal Government now says. Let us just see what happens when that comes out through the Grants Commission, because there are a few sleights of hand that can be achieved in public transport, as I have identified. With a stroke of the pen I could reduce the deficit by $7m and we could increase the education budget by $7m by transferring school costs. It is a book entry; it is not about achieving real reform.
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