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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 2212 ..

Mr Quinlan: The rotten case you made, yes.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I really was quite quiet, despite all the provocation, when others were speaking.

MR SPEAKER: You were indeed, Chief Minister, and I ask that interjections cease.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, scale economies come from businesses doing more of the same thing, as I assume most people in this house would know. Ecowise is non-core business to ACTEW; no-one has argued with that. The majority of its activities are with organisations other than ACTEW. So, scale economies simply do not come from the number of employees employed in this group of companies, Mr Speaker. They are getting the majority of their work from outside ACTEW already. There are simply no apparent economies which - - -

Mr Quinlan: They do their own payroll, do they? Rubbish!

MS CARNELL: It is actually a true statement. There are simply no economies which would warrant the retention of Ecowise at this stage.

Mr Quinlan: More accounting lessons, is it?

MS CARNELL: I could give you more accounting lessons, Mr Quinlan, but we are talking about something more important now.

Mr Speaker, the disposal of Ecowise will actually allow ACTEW, potentially, to improve its own economies. It is a non-core business. It will go and manage itself. The staff will own it. It will, I believe, go from strength to strength. Possibly, it gives ACTEW a capacity to concentrate more on its core business as well. Mr Speaker, that is a good outcome for business generally and something that the ACTEW board was very positive about. In other words, Mr Speaker, the businesses of both ACTEW and Ecowise are, potentially, better off if the sale proceeds, because both can get on with what they are best at.

Many people have spoken about community benefits, public interest and so on. As I said this morning, the basis of this proposal, which came from the staff and which the Government is putting forward to this Assembly on their behalf, is to maintain jobs, ensure that the business stays here in the ACT, make sure that public assets, that is, assets owned by the community here in Canberra are properly used - in other words, that we do get their value back to the ACT community, and we can do that, Mr Speaker, with employee ownership, with a new SME here in the ACT. I think that is pretty exciting.

I come back to the bottom line here. If the value of the company is maintained and we do get the value that the company is worth, which the independent entity has told us, and we do maintain jobs, I think this will be pretty exciting. I would like to use this opportunity to wish everybody in Ecowise well for the future. It would appear that the vote will be positive here. I congratulate the owners of Canberra's newest small business.

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