Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

None . . Page.. 897 ..

By way of an aside, I recall one occasion when there was some community concern about this, and we took the camera crews down to the Lower Molonglo treatment plant. One ACTEW employee became so carried away and so enthused, quite rightly, about ACTEW's performance that in a flourish he consumed a glass of the water in front of the cameras. I rather blanched in horror at the large sign in red behind saying, “Danger! Do not drink the water”; but this ACTEW employee did and is there still. Mr Moore and I grew up on it, so it is obviously no problem at all. That aside was to illustrate the fact that yes, ACTEW has some less efficient - in mere economic terms - indicators for sewerage because of the high cost.

In an attempt at rationality, and aside from the dinosaurs, the Trebbies and the Berlin Wall, one thing Mrs Carnell said was, “You have to have a corporate culture, and only through corporatisation can you get a corporate culture”. Any organisation that has so enthused its workers that they are prepared to drink the sewage, it seems to me, has a pretty good corporate culture. The level of pride of ACTEW employees in that organisation is justly very high. I would also point out that very substantial sums of public funds have been expended in those ACTEW corporate image video ads that we have seen for many years. No-one has ever criticised them, quite rightly, and it is quite appropriate for ACTEW to engage in that sort of process. So, the argument that you can have a corporate identity and you can enthuse your employees only if you are in a corporate form, Mrs Carnell, is simply not true. Mr De Domenico says that you have to be a corporation to provide incentives to improve efficiency within ACTEW. That is simply not so. It has been done for years and can continue to be done. Should we improve on it? Yes, we should improve on it.

The second justification is to separate the regulatory functions from the company, as it is not acceptable for an organisation to compete in an industry while regulating parts of that industry. Whether you should or should not do that is an argument. That nearly happened the last time round. While the Labor Government decided not to proceed with the incorporation of ACTEW, we continued to debate within our own councils for about a year afterwards, according to my recollection, that idea of separation, and some level of separation occurred. But you can debate that one way or the other.

Mr De Domenico: What stopped you from doing it?

MR CONNOLLY: We simply decided that it was not a sound move. But even assuming that it is a sound move - and I will grant Mr De Domenico, for the purpose of argument, that it is a sound move, and thus, on his second point, we should separate regulatory functions from commercial functions - you do not have to corporatise to do that. All you have to do is set up your regulatory agency within the Department of Urban Services and leave within ACTEW the statutory authority, the commercial arm. Even assuming that it is a good idea, it is not a justification for corporatisation, because you can do it perfectly well within the statutory form.

The third point states that you must corporatise in order to identify and fund accordingly the Government's community service obligations. Again, one can debate the extent to which one should do that; but, given that it is a sound idea to identify and fund accordingly the Government's community service obligations, that can be achieved perfectly adequately, perfectly simply, within the form of a statutory authority.

Mrs Carnell: But why?

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .