Page 2031 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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The Government will realise that this is not going to work. It is a total stuff-up. That is why we should disallow the determination and we should send ACTEW back to the drawing board. We should tell them, "You might be able to snow the new Minister who has just taken over, who did not really have time to look at what you were doing; but you cannot snow the rest of us. Go back and do the job properly. Give us a timeline when you can meter all users. Give us a timeline when you can introduce this properly. Give us a proper account of where the money is coming from, how you are going to keep the system cost neutral and how you are going to return the money that is basically part of the ACT revenue. Answer those questions. Come up with a user pays system". I have no problem about a user pays system.
The system should also be balanced with government. This afternoon we are going to debate a pensioner rebate system. In the briefing that Helen Szuty and I were given yesterday, we were shown that, because of some difference in approach, pensioners in fact will be able to get 390 kilolitres of water - that will be about the break-even point - at rebated rates before they are charged excess. The system is all over the place. It is a total stuff-up. It is important for this Assembly to say to this Minister and to ACTEW, "Hey; it is not working. What you have suggested does not add up in the community interest". There is a way to do it. I do not mind saying here that the way to do it, as far as I am concerned, is to begin charging on a full user pays basis. I was appreciative of the Liberals passing to us a Jonathan Baldry critique of punitive pricing stating that punitive pricing basically does not work in this sort of situation and asking why we do not go the full way. But before you go the full way, you have to be able to do it equitably. That is the challenge for ACTEW and that is what they have to meet.
Madam Speaker, I would like the Government to support this disallowance motion, realising that a new Minister has been snowed by the ACTEW board. One has to question the competence of this board when it comes up with a system such as this. Ms Szuty will deal with some of the research information upon which they based their decision and some of the claims they are making. They should stop trying to do a con job on the Canberra community and come up with a system that works, a better system.
In any business - and I say this particularly to the Liberals - if somebody comes up with a system that is totally stuffed up and has holes all the way through it, what do you do with it? Do you say, "We will put the system through now, look at it later and then deal with it."? No, you do not. You send a message that if our public service, ACTEW, is going to work in a business way, as they want to work, we are sending this proposal back to them, saying, "You have got it wrong. Do it right". That is what this disallowance motion is about.
Mr De Domenico: Will you send the Public Sector Management Bill back to the drawing board until they get it right?
MR MOORE: We hear an interjection about the Public Sector Management Bill. We will deal with that this afternoon and we will deal with it probably next week, but for the moment let us deal with this particular issue. You know that it is a stuff-up.
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