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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 2210 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

amount to the main bucket of money out of which we pay for our community service obligations. The bucket of money the Government has available to it satisfies a lot of the needs of our community. It is those little contributions that make the bucket big enough to do it. Let us make no mistake: If we sell off this instrumentality, Ecowise, the small amount of profit that it is actually returning at the moment on a recurrent basis will not be available to us for something else.

Ms Carnell: The sum of $815.

MR HARGREAVES: I hear the Chief Minister mumbling in her beard that there is $15 worth of profit. That is 15 bucks that is missing.

Ms Carnell: I said $815.

MR HARGREAVES: I do beg your pardon. It was $815. I stand corrected.

Mr Corbell: That is after the quarter of a million they paid to the Government.

MR HARGREAVES: That is right. I do stand corrected. Mr Corbell, I thank you very much for that. I heard Mr Osborne and Mr Kaine say that they were not swayed by the arguments of the Government on this issue. Indeed, I support that position because I was not swayed by them, either. I understand their sympathy with these people wanting to have their own business, saying, "I am facing the axe anyway, because the bottom line is that if we do not buy it, in a couple of months' time the axe will come down and we will be gone". That is the agenda. These people are facing the agenda that everybody else just reads about in the paper. They can see the writing on the wall and they know that this is their best way out. Do they want to be hung or do they want the guillotine? They are going with the guillotine.

Mr Rugendyke: Come on, be optimistic!

MR HARGREAVES: I am being optimistic about it. If you want to be really optimistic about it, how about getting this Government to express their faith in these people? These people have delivered a professional service, and what the Government is saying to them is: "We do not want you". You do not sell something that is going to make a profit. They are saying, "We do not want you". What we are saying is that we do want them. We want them to remain part of our electricity infrastructure system. We want them to stay and we want them to be given the wherewithal to get on with it.

This is not the first time I have heard this sort of stuff - "Let us flick them". We talked about it with CityScape. The CityScape people reckoned that they could make a go of it, but the Government would not let them. What happened is that 19 jobs went - "Goodnight, Dick, you are gone". I believe that we should recognise the professionalism of these folk and give them the encouragement and the impetus to get on with it and do a good job. If they can make it in private enterprise, why can they not make it within this system? The only answer I can come up with is that this Government will not let them.

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