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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2649 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

These dilemmas are thrown up for Territory-owned corporations in a way they are not in the public debate for privately-owned corporations. Privately-owned corporations are put upon to act in ways which might be described as befitting good corporate citizenship - for example, providing discounts for low-income people and taking account of other public interest issues such as consumer rights and environmental law - just because it is good for preserving their good name. The provisions of the Territory Owned Corporations Act can sometimes create the impression in the minds of the people in those Territory-owned corporations that they are at arm's length from normal public interest issues. It is important that the temptation to descend into that kind of mind-set be avoided by boards and executives of Territory-owned corporations, because the community as a whole does understand that corporations owned by the Territory are owned by the public and ought to act in the public interest.

One of the things which concerned me when a couple of years ago we were debating in this place the corporatisation of ACTEW was the fact that representatives of ACTEW seemed to think that the corporatisation of ACTEW would lead to an end to their being hounded by politicians wanting them to take account of things which politicians say are in the public interest. I guess I was concerned about that for two reasons. The first is that I think politicians are perfectly within their rights to be hounding government-owned entities about what they regard as the public interest. The second is that I thought it reflected a rather unrealistic expectation on the part of management of ACTEW if they thought that they were going to escape that kind of thing.

Similarly, I was very concerned that the Government came into this place and proposed the corporatisation of ACTEW in a way which excluded ACTEW from the operation of the FOI Act, from scrutiny by the Ombudsman's Office and from the whistleblower legislation. It was only when these things were brought to the attention of the Government that they moved appropriate amendments to bring them back within the purview of that legislation. In other words, they had to be embarrassed into it. That does not seem to me to give much comfort to the thought that the Government truly believes that Territory-owned corporations should be the subject of the full accountability mechanisms that we might expect of government departments.

Having said that, I have no problem with the idea of corporatisation in appropriate circumstances, and I have no doubt that, with the proper spirit, Territory-owned corporations can operate in a way which makes them as accountable as any government department. In that sense I think that the issue is more to do with the mind-set with which we approach the business of running the affairs of the community than the technicalities of how the individual organisations are structured. In that respect I noted Mr Kaine's comment about the sometimes overenthusiastic use of notions like commercial-in-confidence to protect Territory-owned corporations or other government business activities from the scrutiny which they appropriately deserve.

Ms Tucker, in her remarks, raised another matter in relation to scrutiny, namely, the issue of whether staff, members of the board, or the executives of Territory-owned corporations might feel it appropriate to use litigation as a way of resolving differences with members of the Legislative Assembly over the policy directions taken by Territory-owned corporations. Ms Tucker highlighted the circumstances of her involvement with the former chief executive of ACTEW on a matter like that.

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