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Mr De Domenico interjected, quite rightly, that ACTEW now has a fine reputation as an environmentally conscious agency; but do members think for a minute that that just happened, that ACTEW just woke up one day and said, “Gee, we think we will become environmentally conscious.”? There was an enormous level of political involvement in taking ACTEW to that position. I think it is fair to say that utility providers in Australia, historically, tend to adopt what you might call engineering determinism. Engineers tend to get to the top of these organisations. A thought pattern develops - that to any problem the solution must be an engineering solution and, if there is an engineering solution, it should be done. I build; therefore I am. An organisation just goes on and on. That has reached its highest level in Tasmania, where the Hydro-Electric Commission is generally seen as having run Tasmania since before the war. It mattered little, many observers would say, who was the government in Tasmania; the Hydro-Electric Commission got its way.

Mr De Domenico: I do not see Dr Sargent in this place, Mr Connolly.

MR CONNOLLY: This is what we are concerned about. ACTEW, as a statutory authority, able to be called across into the Minister's office, able to be given clear briefings and instructions in much the same way that a Minister deals with other agency heads, over recent years, quite remarkably, has developed a reputation for environmental excellence. One of the things that gave me enormous pleasure as Minister responsible for ACTEW, towards the end of that era, was our getting bouquets from the Conservation Council, who were not always in the business of giving bouquets to us as a government or to anyone as a government. Nor is it their role to do that. They were commenting on the extent to which ACTEW was focusing on environmental issues, was turning its mind to those issues. Again, do members think that happened overnight?

When we first came into government, when my colleague Bill Wood was first appointed Environment Minister and I was first appointed Urban Services Minister, we had what had been a regular occasion in Canberra winters - a bypass down at Lower Molonglo. The pattern historically had been that not much happened. It was better if it did not appear in the press, and, if it did, nobody would say very much. We took the view that this was unacceptable, and we made it very clear to ACTEW that we had to open our books fully on this process. For the first time ever, we opened all the doors and dragged the TV cameras and everybody down to Lower Molonglo. We exposed to the community the whole process and worked very hard on developing solutions. The solution that was developed, much to ACTEW’s credit, but again as a result of some very clear guidance and determined effort by the Government collectively, and particularly by my colleague Bill Wood and me, was that ACTEW spent a very significant sum of money, well over $10m - Mr De Domenico would probably have in the brief the full amount - in developing those new dam structures which are coming to fruition now down at Lower Molonglo and which will prevent those bypasses from occurring.

That money spent on that dam would show, to many outside observers, consultants and economic rationalists, a further inefficiency in the way ACTEW deals with the sewage side of its business, because it is an additional cost for no net revenue gained. But it was done because our Government was determined that ACTEW would meet the highest

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