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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2648 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

While we can expect government-owned corporations and government agencies to act reasonably and sensibly, there are other avenues open to them if they feel they have been maligned or treated badly, and litigation is not something that this Government would support. I make the point that in this case it is not the corporation that is taking legal action. I do not know the circumstances, but it is my understanding that legal action has been threatened - whether it has actually been taken I do not know - by a private individual in his capacity as a private citizen. I repeat that there is nothing that this Assembly, this Government or anybody else can do to curtail the right of a private individual to do that.

While I generally agree with the matter as presented by Ms Tucker in this matter of public importance, there are always factors and considerations that we must take into account. Apart from that, it is a matter of public importance because it may well lead to putting another boundary around what members of this place can do. We have been through discussions of what privilege means and how far it goes. Perhaps this discussion will lead to a further consideration of that matter.

MR WHITECROSS (4.46): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance because I believe that the issues that have been raised by Ms Tucker are ones which ought to be of concern to members in this place and to the community at large. The position of Territory-owned corporations within the public sector is a unique one and one which gives rise to some opportunities but also some potential problems when it comes to accountability. As they are government-owned corporations, corporations which are using taxpayers' money and acting on behalf of taxpayers, the public have a right to scrutinise what they are doing. The public have a right to know what they are doing and to ensure that they are acting in the public interest.

Yet as corporations they have a rather narrower set of responsibilities defined by their responsibilities to the shareholders and the Corporations Law. As Mr Kaine has already pointed out, the result of that is a fairly convoluted provision in the Territory Owned Corporations Act by which, if a disagreement arises between the Government, who are the shareholders, and the corporation about how they should act, that can be resolved only by a direction under the TOC Act and the payment of appropriate compensation for acting in a way which the board does not believe is in the best commercial interests of the company.

As a result of those kinds of things we find ourselves, and we have found ourselves in the past, having debates about to what extent a Territory-owned corporation, for instance, gives discounts to pensioners or other low-income people because it is a good corporate citizen, to what extent it takes the view that giving discounts to pensioners and low-income earners is an uneconomic thing to do and to what extent, if they are going to do it, they should be compensated by the Government. Should they be taking account of environmental factors in making their decisions or is that a bad commercial decision and one which they should be compensated for if they had to make that decision on environmental grounds?

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