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The experience that I derived relates particularly to the taking on of new employees. In my private sector guise, I had the capacity to make decisions about employing other people in the firm I worked for. For example, on a few occasions, I had to employ staff of various sorts. We would place an ad in the newspaper, the ad would be answered a couple of days later, we would interview the people a couple of days after that, we would fill the position and the person would then start. The process would usually take about a week, maybe a couple of weeks for legal staff, but certainly of about that order.

When I was in one of the legal sections of the then Department of Territories, I was asked to chair a selection committee. I agreed to do this. I imagined that I would be able to put an ad in the paper, interview people who answered the ad and then, with my committee of three, make a recommendation as to what should happen with those particular applications. The process that I embarked upon, from go to whoa, lasted well in excess of three months. That was to employ a fairly small number of additional lawyers in the ACT government service, some of whom are still there. It took more than three months to make a decision that would have been made in the private sector in less than two weeks - I have no doubt about that - for equivalent positions.

It was not that there was any particularly difficult process that had to be encountered or that there were any particular additional qualifications that people in this circumstance needed but that people in the private sector did not need. The difference was a difference in the culture of operation between the private sector and the public sector. The difference was a difference in the speed and efficiency of decision-making between those two sectors. Mr Speaker, that is what these corporatisation Bills before us tonight are all about. They are about providing a mechanism for ACTEW to operate in a commercial, competitive world, one in which the sorts of symptoms of public service operation do not inhibit the way in which ACTEW provides services to the community. ACTEW must provide those services in an entirely different environment.

Members opposite, when they first started to debate the Government's program of corporatisation in this area - and I think Ms Follett particularly did this - sniggeringly said, “We do not have any competition in electricity. Whom are you going to buy your electricity from if not ACTEW? Teehee, hee!”. Of course, Mr Speaker, that exhibits the enormous ignorance that has been present on the benches opposite. We are today in an intensely competitive environment for provision of electricity, for services. That competitive environment will spell a difficult path for ACTEW if it is not able to compete on similar terms with other organisations. We must give ACTEW the opportunity of providing that kind of competition to those firms, or else the environment will see ACTEW’s competitive position deteriorate. That would be bad for us, Mr Speaker, because we are the people who benefit, who see the dividends, so to speak - that is, the community of the ACT. We lose out if ACTEW cannot compete in that marketplace.

If we can ignore the evidence of what is happening in other parts of this country, ignore the fact that other States, including many Labor States, have seen fit to corporatise their public utilities in the same fashion, we still have the problem that we will be operating in an environment which is changing so rapidly that a responsive organisation is required to meet those challenges. I do not believe that we can do that merely by dictating from a Minister's pen what level of efficiency ACTEW will achieve.

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