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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1176 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: What will you believe?

Ms McRae: No, I do not believe it.

MR HUMPHRIES: They are ABS figures.

Ms McRae: The margin of error makes it - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: They are corrected from the previous month's figures which were criticised by the Canberra Times and others. They have been corrected by the ABS. These are corrected figures. The participation rate has fallen by only 0.1 of 1 per cent, from 72.3 per cent to 72.2 per cent, since we came to government. Overall, those figures are extremely impressive, and those opposite are not prepared to concede that.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I want to make reference to ACTEW. Some people have described the actions in respect of ACTEW as "ripping the guts out of ACTEW", "gutting the organisation" and "hit and run". We have heard all those sorts of comments. I must say that this really is a very intriguing point of view. Those opposite have argued against either the privatisation or the corporatisation of ACTEW because they say it is a public asset; that the public should own it; that the public should get the benefit of ACTEW. If the public get the benefit of ACTEW, why should not the public have the advantage of major profits made by ACTEW? The answer is that they should. Mr Speaker, what we are doing is taking that benefit and applying it to the benefit of the people of the ACT.

Ms McRae: You are making them borrow. You do not fool any of us.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, again those opposite will not believe it. They talk over me. They try to avoid it. They talk to themselves. They look down. They read their papers. They avoid the reality.

Mr Kaine: Or they absent themselves altogether from the chamber.

MR HUMPHRIES: Most of them have absented themselves altogether from the chamber. I again quote from the Canberra Times:

... the idea of such a drawing is defensible; bodies such as Actew must now compete in open markets, including out of the ACT. The $100m extracted - some, but probably not all, of which Actew will have to make up by borrowing - belongs to the people of the ACT. In the new climate it might well have been spending that - even facing the possibility of losing that - in operations in NSW or elsewhere.

The people of the ACT own that money. Mr Speaker, we all know that those opposite would be doing the same thing if they were in the same position. If they had thought of it they would have been doing it. It leaves us with very little to say in this budget debate.

Debate (on motion by Mr Berry) adjourned.

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