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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2531 ..

Ms Tucker: It is a hedging contract.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked, Ms Tucker.

MR KAINE: If Ms Tucker is prepared to listen, I will do my best to answer her. It does not mean to say that I am going to give her the answer that she wants, however, Mr Speaker, as you so often point out.

ACTEW was established as a corporation so that it could get on with the job of providing electrical energy to this Territory in a new competitive environment. There is a regime of accountability with which ACTEW and all other Territory-owned corporations are obliged to comply. The accountability provisions are contained, first of all, in the Territory Owned Corporations Act, which requires the people managing it over there to act honestly, to have a duty of care and diligence, a duty to avoid conflict of interest and the like. The directors of the corporation are required to act in the best interests of the company at all times. That is their job. That does not mean to say that they have to act according to the conditions set down by the ACT Greens. They have to act in the interests of the company. At the end of the day, if they do not, they are accountable, first of all, to the Government and, secondly, to this place.

As part of its satisfying the requirement to ensure the continuing supply of electrical energy to the ACT, ACTEW has had to secure its place in the new competitive arrangements in which there are a number of electrical energy generators, there are a number of electrical energy wholesalers and retailers, and there is a distribution system. In order to secure their place they let a contract which gives us some guarantee that we can get out of the pool a certain amount of electrical energy on behalf of the ACT community and at a certain price over the next three years.

Ms Tucker: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have already explained that I understand how the hedging contract works. I am asking for what processes the Minister thinks have occurred to bring about accountability for the objective that is in the Act. In ACTEW's Act it has to have regard for the environment. How has he worked out that this contract which he is describing does not have environmental implications? That is my question.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The Minister is answering the question.

MR KAINE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The contract can have no environmental implications, Mr Speaker, because it does not require the supplier at the other end of the system to increase the amount of electrical energy that they generate. All it does is secure a part of their existing output on behalf of this community. So it in no way adds to any degradation of the environment whatsoever, neither in Yallourn nor in Canberra. I do not know how else I can convince the Greens that I believe that the directors of ACTEW have acted properly, within the terms of reference that they have, in securing electrical energy at a reasonable price for the people who live in the ACT. I do not accept the implication from the Greens that somehow or other we have added to the degradation of our environment. We have not.

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