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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1652 ..

MR CORBELL: On a point of order: The Chief Minister has made an allegation and an imputation, and I ask - - -

Ms Carnell: I asked a question, whether it was all right to lie.

MR CORBELL: She made an imputation that I was lying and I ask you to ask her to withdraw it.

Ms Carnell: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I will withdraw, but is it all right to misrepresent the report, because that is what is happening here?

MR CORBELL: I take a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Mr Corbell, resume your seat.

Ms Carnell: That is not out of order because I have not - - -

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, you have withdrawn the statement "a lie".

Ms Carnell: Yes, I have.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: That has been done. I call Mr Corbell.

MR CORBELL: I am sure the Chief Minister will get an opportunity to respond when she stands up. She might have the courtesy to wait until that occurs. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I maintain that there is no clear mention of the assessment of the impact on jobs in the models proposed in this report, either the retention of public ownership or in the privatisation model. For that reason we believe it is not an effective or an independent, impartial analysis of the situation which ACTTAB faces. This report deals with the futures and the lives of 120 people who work directly for ACTTAB, along with hundreds and hundreds more people who earn their livelihoods indirectly as a result of their association with ACTTAB, and it is simply unacceptable.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, earlier in this place, some months ago now, I was very pleased to present a petition. That petition was from over 1,000 residents in this Territory and it requested this Assembly not to support the privatisation of ACTTAB. If the Government wants to come into this place and argue that they have no choice but to sell ACTTAB, which seems to be the road they are continuing to head down, they should at least have the decency to present a report which is going to deal with the issue of the jobs of the people who are employed with ACTTAB. They have not done that. They walked out and used the same terms of reference that recommended privatisation in the Northern Territory to get the privatisation recommendation that they want here in the ACT. That is not an independent and impartial analysis. That is not through any fault of the consultants. It is simply because those were the rules the Government set and that was the result the Government wanted.

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