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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1951 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

The thing that seems to have escaped those opposite and others in this Assembly is that there is a great difference between return to shareholders, meaning this Assembly, the people of the ACT, and the actual management of ACTEW. The ACTEW board manages ACTEW, but that does not mean that the people of Canberra should not expect a reasonable return on their significant capital investment in ACTEW. For the Greens to suggest for a moment that the Government and the people of Canberra expecting a reasonable return on investment and, therefore, requesting a reasonable return on investment is the same thing as directing ACTEW on how they should produce the power they produce or how they should buy it or where they should get it from shows a total lack of understanding of the organisational structure of ACTEW, whose job it is to manage ACTEW under the requirements, the expectations, shall we say, of those who have invested heavily in the infrastructure of that organisation.

Again, I come back to the central basis of this debate so far. It is that you are damned if you do and you are damned if you do not. We have heard all the speakers commenting on this line in the budget say that it is absolutely shocking that this Government should go down the path of redundancies. Those opposite did exactly the same when they were in government; but now it is not a good idea, now it is a dreadful idea. We are not supposed to have redundancies, we are not supposed to reduce costs, as we have in the Chief Minister's Department, as we have reduced the cost of administration - that is a really bad thing to do - but you have to address your operating loss. You cannot address wages, according to those opposite, you cannot change what you spend on things such as health, education and service delivery out there; but you have to address your operating loss. One day, they will tell us what they would do.

MR BERRY (12.37): Mr Speaker, I rise to speak on this line with concern, first of all, over the way the Chief Minister's Department in particular has pursued its role in the Estimates Committee. I would ask the Independents to listen closely to this.

Mr Humphries: There are none here. How can they?

MR BERRY: They will be listening. I would ask the Independents to listen closely to this because I know that, each time the Independents criticise the Government and the Greens criticise the Government, you can see that look from the Government benches. They look over and say, "Not again! They supported us; why are they criticising us?". They expect it from us because they know that we do not support their ideology; but the on again, off again support that comes from the Independent and Greens benches must be a bit like a boil.

In any event, this is about the Government's approach to the committee process. I think the Estimates Committee process this year was treated shabbily, particularly because it was in the lead-up to an election and the community were entitled to have a full process in accordance with previous recommendations of estimates committees. That was not something that was able to be carried through this Assembly. Labor would have preferred that outcome, but the Government has had its way in relation to that issue. I think the Estimates Committee process this year has been unfair and too short, and the Government has got off lightly in relation to the issue because of the tight timeframes that were set on the matter.

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