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What are the implications for the bottom line of ACTEW?”. I asked these questions, Mr De Domenico, and what I was told was, “You are asking me to reveal sensitive, commercial-in-confidence information, and I am not going to tell you”. So much for community consultation. So much for informing members.

One of the senior executives was talking about the proposals to corporatise ACTEW. I asked him some questions about the corporatisation of ACTEW and what the benefits of the corporatisation of ACTEW were. What was explained to me was, “This is the fashion now. Everybody is doing it, so we should do it too. It is really efficient to be corporatised. We have to get in and be efficient like everybody else because that is what corporatisation means”. I could not get a satisfactory answer. When I said, “But what you are saying does not explain to me how it is going to be more efficient, how it is going to be better, why we should be doing this”, they said, “Well, to tell the truth, what it all comes down to is this: We want to be able to get on with the business of running ACTEW without having politicians and bureaucrats and unions telling us what to do”.

Mr De Domenico: That is not true.

MR WHITECROSS: I am afraid that it is true, Mr De Domenico.

Mr De Domenico: No, it is not.

MR WHITECROSS: That is what I was told.

Mr De Domenico: No; I think you are misrepresenting what you were told, just between you and me.

MR WHITECROSS: No, I am not, Mr De Domenico; that is what I was told. Mr De Domenico, I personally believe that the taxpayers, the ratepayers, the citizens of Canberra have a right to expect that an organisation that is valued at $1.5 billion, with a turnover of over $300m, is something that is of interest to the community at large, of interest to the elected representatives of the community. I do not understand why we should be handing control of the organisation across to a corporate form that is more remote from the legislature, more focused on profit maximisation, less focused on service delivery, and less able to grasp the implications of social and environmental concerns. Mr Connolly talked before about some of the struggles he has had in the past to orient the organisation onto environmental concerns, and I fully acknowledge that they have responded to those pressures from government; but that is the way it should be.

Mr Speaker, these are the reasons why we approach the corporatisation of ACTEW with some scepticism, with some searching for reasons why we should be putting an organisation through the turmoil and uncertainty of institutional change when we are not clear on how it is going to be better at the other end and what is going to happen which is different from what we have now. So far we have not been persuaded. I have not been persuaded, my colleagues have not been persuaded, lots of other people in the community have not been persuaded. We are very reluctant, under those circumstances, to embrace this proposal at this time.

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