Page 3663 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Moore: We read it in the paper this morning.
Mr Kaine: We read that in the paper.
Mr Stevenson: We all read it. We have already read it. You do not need to answer this, Terry.
MR LAMONT: I asked the question because I know that they can read, but they very seldom understand.
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to hear the interjections from opposite. They indicate that the Opposition have in fact read the Canberra Times this morning. Perhaps that means that we will not have any more ill informed, trite attacks on ACTEW, as we did last night from the Leader of the Opposition bleating away that the Labor Party does not understand how to handle public enterprises. An independent survey conducted for the Australian Electricity Supply Association by an organisation by the name of London Economics - an international body which is taking part in a major international benchmarking study of electricity supply and distribution authorities - indicates that on a number of leading indicators ACTEW is indeed leading the way in Australia.
ACTEW, on its electricity distribution side, and I stress "distribution" - it is true that ACTEW is not an electricity generator, but this was a survey of distribution authorities - delivered to the people of Canberra electricity at the cheapest price for 1991-92, and our prices have remained constant for 1992-93, although other States have increased theirs. ACT residents paid 7.6c per kilowatt hour; Sydney residents, 9.3c; SEQEB customers, 9.5c; South Australian residents, 10.7c; Tasmanians, despite the presence of massive supplies of cheap hydro power, 8.8c; Melbourne residents, 10.7c; and Western Australians, 14.1c. ACT residents are paying considerably less.
In terms of system outages - and this is a credit to those linespersons who are out in all sorts of emergency situations, and no-one could say that Canberra has a kinder climate than other areas - we had 61.3 hours compared with 86 for Sydney, 120 for Prospect, 102 for SEQEB, 106 for South Australia, 267 for Tasmania, 438 for Melbourne and 188 for Western Australia. Again, we are the lowest. In terms of return on operating assets - that is, what the ratepayer gets back by way of a dividend from the electricity distribution side - we had a return on assets for electricity of 16.4 per cent, compared with 6.3 per cent for Sydney, 9 per cent for SEQEB, 7.8 per cent for South Australia, 11.4 per cent for Tasmania, 11.6 per cent for Melbourne and 14.8 per cent for Western Australia.
On each of those three indicators the ACT Electricity and Water Authority - an efficiently run, publicly owned statutory authority - is leading the way in Australia. Madam Speaker, hopefully, if the members opposite actually did read the paper this morning, we will have no more inane comments that you merely wave the magic wand of privatisation or corporatisation and all will be better. We are leading the way with our public authorities.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .