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The suggestion was made by, I think, Mr Connolly, that the idea of better return on the investment is code for getting a bigger dividend out of ACTEW and therefore forcing up prices. I point out to members of the house - - -

Mr Connolly: Better return on the investment means a bigger dividend, surely.

MR HUMPHRIES: If you want to talk about bigger dividends, let me point out to members that in the four years of Labor government, during which they controlled ACTEW, the total dividend returned to them from ACTEW was $100m. In the one year of Liberal government, during the Alliance Government, that return was only $12m. You can see from those figures that the average Labor dividend was more than double the Liberal Party's dividend from ACTEW. Who was squeezing money out of ACTEW by way of dividends?

Mr Speaker, let me also point out that there is also a very dishonest argument running around in the Labor Party's ranks about there being some move to raise prices through corporatisation which is a direct product of this Government's plans to corporatise. Ms Follett, if she casts her mind back, will recall that last year she sounded a warning about higher prices for electricity in the ACT. It had nothing to do with the change in the structure of ACTEW. At that stage there was a Labor government in power. The reason that ACTEW prices for electricity were going to rise was that the ACT was being taken off the breast of the Snowy Mountains electricity scheme. We no longer have that highly advantageous arrangement with the Snowy Mountains Authority which effectively gave us heavily discounted power. We therefore have to go into that competitive market that those opposite do not seem to believe exists. In that competitive market, unfortunately, in the absence of those subsidies - at least in the short term - prices have to rise. That is what Ms Follett told us last year; but, when we sound the same warning for the same reasons this year, Mr Whitecross says, “That must be because of corporatisation. Aren't these guys nasty? Look at what they are doing. We have proved our point. Prices are going up already”. Mr Speaker, the citizens of this Territory deserve arguments of more honesty than that.

I think it is particularly distressing, if I might say so, that in this debate the Greens have overlooked the important advantages to consumers in this Territory of having in place a model for delivering corporate services which has the capacity to take on board social objectives but which also remains competitive enough to deliver cheaper electricity prices for the people of Canberra. If we do not corporatise this body and if it does not compete effectively in this new competitive market, there will be a direct and clear consequence of that fact. It will not be that ACTEW will cease to exist. That is almost certainly not going to be the case. It is a statutory authority. It will remain in existence, because we created it and we sustain it. What it will do is pass on higher electricity prices for the people of Canberra, if it is in that marketplace and if it cannot compete on that corporate plane.

Mr Speaker, the proof of the pudding is that other States have decided to eat it. They have all gone down that path. They know what has to be done. The Federal Labor Government has in fact heavily corporatised bodies it owns, for precisely the same reasons - OTC, Australian Airlines, AIDC, the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, the Federal Airports Corporation, Telecom. Others more recently have

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