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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3744 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, Mr Osborne has raised the issue of matters being signed and agreed to in other places and the Assembly being dragged along on the tail of those decisions. It is not a bad point in the context of the arrangements that have been put in place here. One of the most interesting things about the whole approach is that it seems that, while much of the timetable has been set, obviously, with the approval of Ministers, a letter from the chairperson - unless chairmen are called "Elizabeth" these days - of the COAG senior officials electricity working group refers to this cut-off point in early 1998. Of course, we now seem to be dancing to the tune of the senior officials electricity working group as well.

There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm amongst the bureaucracy to make this thing happen. I can tell you that there is not much enthusiasm on this side of the house to see it happen without consultation; but we do recognise that the Government has put this legislation before the chamber at a time when it has been impossible to properly air all of the issues surrounding it. Had the time been available to us, we would have preferred the matter to be considered by a committee in the next Assembly and any recommendations arising from that committee to be available for whoever forms the next government to approach the national grid with a view to implementing those recommendations in some way, in the best interests of the ACT community.

I am not satisfied with the approach the Government has taken on this so far. I will be a constant critic of it. It is clearly by design that the committee process - the much applauded committee process of this Assembly - will not be able to get its hands on this legislation in a satisfactory way.

Mr Humphries: It is a plot, is it not, Wayne? We are out to get you. You have seen through us.

MR BERRY: He is impossible to stop. He carries his role of Minister for Silly Remarks a little bit too far.

So, this legislation, by the look of it, will pass through this Assembly and it will not have been exposed to the appropriate public debate, as was promised by Mrs Carnell when she came to office. The Government has not been open and consultative in respect of this legislation. In fact, it has been quite the contrary.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (4.00), in reply: Mr Speaker, I must say that I am absolutely astonished at the position on this matter taken by the Leader of the Opposition. As I said the other day, one would believe that some of these things just come out of the sky like a bolt of lightning and nobody has ever heard about them before. Nothing is further from the truth. We have been working now for nearly six years towards a national framework in the supply of electricity, water and gas, amongst other things. There has been a program that has been set in place for all of that time. As the Chief Minister has pointed out in this place in the last 48 hours, most of the agreements that the Government has entered into on the matters were signed by the former Chief Minister when Labor was in office.

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