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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 1 Hansard (29 April) . . Page.. 168 ..

MR QUINLAN: No. We have never said - - -

Ms Carnell: You did.

MR QUINLAN: Never. We are certainly against it - - -

Ms Carnell: That is all right. That is good. They are now saying that that is not the case. They would sell.

MR SPEAKER: Proceed, Mr Quinlan.

MR QUINLAN: From this point on, the door is ajar; okay?

Ms Carnell: Okay. I accept that. The door is ajar. That is great to hear.

MR QUINLAN: But, at the point of the election, the question was open. It was not an election issue. As such, the Government does not have a mandate to sell ACTEW. In fact, if you had read the letters to the editor, et cetera, around that time, you would know that most of the public reaction was in the negative in relation to the sale of ACTEW. It is, therefore, axiomatic that the decision should be the province of the Assembly as a whole. I am pleased to hear that we are going to be fully informed and that when we read this document from Fay Richwhite we are going to find that they have recommended that they get another job and do some more reviewing.

To return to the door that is marginally ajar, the only premise, I submit, upon which an asset could possibly be sold is that there is tangible evidence of increased benefit to the Territory. I am a bit concerned about not only where the decision is taken, but also what would happen with the money. History, with this Government, is not on our side. We have seen sale and leaseback arrangements, which were for some time not borrowing, until the Auditor-General got hold of them and then they actually were correctly designated as borrowing. We have seen ACTEW's reserves rifled and consumed within a given year. So, we are concerned as to where the money goes.

There have been references to what other governments have done. Even the guru, Jeffrey Kennett, at least took the money from his asset sales and applied it to debt reduction so that there was no net reduction in the wealth of his State. So far, over the last couple of budgets, we have seen effective net reductions in our wealth. We are living for today, and not for tomorrow.

Mr Humphries: We reduced our operating loss. That was pretty good.

MR QUINLAN: No, you did not.

Mr Humphries: Yes, we did.

MR QUINLAN: I am going to give accounting seminars to you guys one of these days.

Mr Hargreaves: And they will have to pay for it again, will they not? They will have to pay for it another time.

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