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MR CONNOLLY: I am not the one who has to say why. You are, because you are proposing to this Assembly that, within two weeks of seeing the Bill and in an unscheduled night sitting, we fundamentally alter the structure of the largest public enterprise in this Territory, the organisation that controls $1½ billion worth of this community's assets, the organisation that plays such an absolutely central and sensitive role in the environment, not just of the ACT but of the entire inland river system. So, “But why?” is the question not for you to mutter, asking me, but for you to answer and explain to this Assembly. Every one of these points you have put forward as a justification, as a “but we must corporatise”, could be fulfilled, if they are valid, just as easily under the statutory authority mechanism.

I am taking them out of sequence here. The next point I will speak to says that it would allow the Government and the community to maximise the returns on their investment in such enterprises. That could be code for anything. Maximising return on the investment, given that the investment is the $1.5 billion asset, could well be code for “jack up the dividend and jack up the prices”. We are a bit concerned about what that is flagging for future prices. Again, even assuming that there should be a maximisation of return on investment - and there can be debate about the extent to which that is the sole goal of a utility provider - that can be achieved under the statutory authority formula. So, each of those four points could have been achieved under a statutory authority mechanism.

The final point says that it would allow the corporate body to set itself up along company lines, in line with the Corporations Law. In other words, you have to be a corporation to be a corporation. Yes, I grant you that, as a matter of simple logic, you do have to be a corporation to be a corporation. So what? It is meaningless. But then you say that it puts it on a comparable footing with other commercial enterprises to become competitive. So, we come back once again to this mantra that ACTEW has to be a corporation to be competitive. Why? In what sense does it have to be a corporation to be competitive? It is a different argument to the breaking down of the vertical monopoly in electricity generation, distribution and supply that applies in the larger States. ACTEW does not generate; it is clearly not that type of organisation. ACTEW should be as efficient as it can be.

To the extent that we have the opportunity to engage in cross-border operations, yes, we need to be involved in that. To the extent that we need to protect our patch against any raids from interstate, yes, we have to do that. But tell me why you have to change to the corporate form to do that? Tell this Assembly why it is necessary to go through this process. Your whole argument here is based on a mantra of competition, competition, competition, and a blind acceptance that you must change to the corporate form in order to achieve these policy goals. You have conspicuously failed to demonstrate the case, other than - - -

Mr De Domenico: You have just given five good reasons out of the speech yourself.

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