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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (4 November) . . Page.. 3576 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

completely honest about Rosemary Follett's involvement in this whole matter, she would have drawn members' attention to a speech that Rosemary made on 24 October 1995 in relation to competition policy, in which she said:

... I still believe that in discussing competition policy for Australia there are a great many issues that need to be quite clearly specified so that the community, the governments and parliaments involved, and also the organisations who will be directly affected by a competition policy, the government business enterprises and so on, are aware of what the important issues are.

I was concerned in the debate on competition policy to ensure that there would be benefits for the community overall as a result of this reform process, and the kinds of benefits that I was anxious to see were, of course, benefits to the consumers; of course, benefits by way of community service obligations on the organisations involved; of course, greater environmental protection, and so on. But it seemed to me that in the debate on competition policy, while there was often lip-service paid to those kinds of issues, it was the rhetoric of competition and of reform that seized the moment and these other issues were not given, throughout that debate, the kind of profile they deserved.

That was the emphasis which, if you had been honest, Mrs Carnell, you would have drawn attention to, because Rosemary Follett, when in opposition, made clear her concerns about the approach of a Liberal administration. She rightly expressed those concerns. It was less than honest of you not to draw attention to her later words in relation to the matter. It is a quite different issue when you look at the comments from Ms Follett which are on the record. Her social justice concerns were made abundantly clear, as were her concerns about the performance of the type of government which we have opposite.

Mrs Carnell was moaning earlier about how certain agreements were never made in the COAG process. I will read from page 422 of Hansard of 10 May 1995, quoting Mrs Carnell:

We are working on implementing the competition policy, and I think it is a really important part of what we did at COAG this year. There are a number of things we are happily committed to doing, such as reviewing legislation and regulations affecting competition, and developing a timetable for reform of all anti-competitive regulation and legislation by the year 2000, in accordance with the Hilmer principles. Further, in line with the principles agreed to under the Hilmer reforms, we will also move to corporatise ACTEW, ACTION and ACTTAB ...

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