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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 1 Hansard (29 April) . . Page.. 172 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

ACTEW's gross margin has improved steadily over the course of the 1990s with a substantive improvement in 1996-97. The 1996-97 result largely reflects very low wholesale electricity prices.

And here is the crunch, Mr Speaker:

Given the unsustainable level of these prices this can be expected to reverse in the medium term.

To put that in lay language, as I understand it, Mr Speaker, given the new market we are operating in, we can expect the sorts of dividends that ACTEW has provided to the Territory, the sorts of economic benefits of its strong economic position within the ACT market as a monopoly retailer within the ACT - the benefits that have accrued to the ACT - to begin to disappear if we do not act to reposition ACTEW within that changing marketplace. That, as I read this report quickly, is what we are being told.

Mr Quinlan: It cannot disappear.

MR HUMPHRIES: "It cannot disappear", says Mr Quinlan. Perhaps it cannot; but I am not sure that I want to see the value of an asset belonging to the taxpayer dissipated severely by the fact that the Government does not act in a changing marketplace. I do not want to see the value of the asset halved or reduced by 75 per cent or more. Those sorts of options are clearly on the cards. Those sorts of options are clearly there. I do not think anyone can look at this report and not be concerned about those sorts of options. I would like to know, in that environment, what option it is that the Labor Party says we should be taking instead.

Mr Quinlan actually said that we had no mandate to sell ACTEW. I would only note that during the campaign people like Mr Whitecross and Mr Berry said repeatedly that, if people voted for the Liberal Party, they would get ACTEW sold. So, it seems to me to be saying that there was some sort of mandate there. Notwithstanding that statement, we need to explore the situation critically. What is the Labor Party's position on this? Where do they say we should go? If they say that there are tests we should apply before we consider options like privatisation, can they tell us what those tests are? I hope that, if there is another speaker in this debate on behalf of the Labor Party, he will do that. I would like to know. I think we would all like to know what the position is.

Saying that there are lots of problems with privatisation is fair enough in a debate like this, and I am sure that there are lots of problems. I do not pretend that there are not problems. I do not deny that issues like the employment base have to be examined in that context. But I want to know what the Labor Party sees as the alternative strategy, and what are the tests, in particular, that they would apply.

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