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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 34 ..

MRS CARNELL: The reason Mr Costa is on the board, as Mr Wood should have known, and certainly as those who might have written the question for Mr Wood should have known, is that a board is not there to represent particular interests. If it were an advisory group, I could understand that. We have had the debate in this place on many occasions when it comes to boards that run particular companies or entities. I think many people around this room have said that boards must not have members on them who represent particular interest groups. The job of a board is to run a company or an entity as well as it can be run on behalf of the shareholders or the owners, and the shareholders or the owners of Totalcare are the people of the ACT. So the person who is in that particular job is not there to represent the workers, is not there to represent the union movement, but is there because of his expertise in running companies of similar ilk in New South Wales.

The fact is that we had very few people in the ACT with union backgrounds, which we felt was important, who also had expertise in running public sector-style companies such as Totalcare. We decided that it was appropriate to get somebody, again, with a quite significant - in fact, about as significant as you could get - union background who also had experience of the sorts of things Totalcare is going through at the moment. As members would be aware, as of 1 January, Totalcare has more than doubled in size, with the advent of the services coming over from Urban Services. That means that there will be significant management challenges for Totalcare, and I would assume that everybody in this house would be very keen to make sure that all members of that board had significant background in this sort of corporate change, particularly public sector-style corporate change. My understanding and my advice is that Mr Costa has this relevant experience, and I am confident that the taxpayers of the ACT or, more importantly, the people of the ACT, who own Totalcare, would want everybody on that board to have as much experience as possible.

MR WOOD: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. It is nice that you allow supplementaries, might I say, and that we do not have the difficulty experienced elsewhere. The Chief Minister seems to forget that Mr Tolley, whom she pushed off the board, obviously had quite reasonable experience in such an enterprise. Is it the case, rather, that this frank and fearless advice you were talking about before is all right so long as it does not come from a union person?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, my understanding of Mr Costa is that he is very much a union person. There is no doubt that Mr Costa has a very long and very illustrious background in the union movement. We believed very strongly that we needed that sort of expertise. I have already said this in my answer, but I am happy to continue. As we said, Mr Speaker - - -

Mr Berry: Bert Tolley criticised you. That was his mistake. He stood up for his members.

MRS CARNELL: Excuse me?

MR SPEAKER: Order! You are answering Mr Wood, Chief Minister.

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