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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (27 October) . . Page.. 2264 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The fact is that the statements made by Mr Corbell in the last few days, in particular, have been totally inaccurate. It is important that we strive to maintain the high standards that have set ACTEW apart from other utilities in this country. The Productivity Commission showed recently that ACTEW had a high level of service quality and low prices. It said, in part:

In general, price reductions have been achieved without loss of service quality.

Mr Corbell, in particular, has made alarmist claims that services and competitive price structures will be under threat if ACTEW is sold. That is not true. He has claimed that privatisation will push up the price of water and power. He is wrong.

Mr Corbell: Look at what happened in South Australia. Look at what happened in Victoria.

MR HUMPHRIES: There is real evidence that private ownership has actually brought prices down in other places where it has been effected. It has not pushed them up, but brought them down. Mr Corbell obviously knows nothing about the dynamics of competition.

Let me take particularly the claim he made, which he has repeated just now on the floor of the chamber, that in Victoria prices went up because of privatisation. He repeated that just now in the chamber - privatisation caused prices to go up in Victoria. When electricity in Victoria was almost completely privatised the price, the real price, of power for domestic customers fell, not rose, by 9 per cent between July 1993 and June 1996. They have fallen, Mr Corbell, not risen. That is the truth.

Mr Corbell: You know those figures are disputed. You know they are disputed. You know the Office of the Regulator-General in Victoria refuses to release all the information. You know it is incorrect.

MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously, Mr Corbell is not convinced. Let me quote for him in a moment some of the comments by the Productivity Commission, which has also commented on these things at great length. If he does not believe me, he can believe what the Productivity Commission has had to say. That body reported just a few weeks ago that taxpayers generally were getting more for their money and paying less for services under a regime of corporatisation and revamping of government trading enterprises. According to a spokesman for the Productivity Commission, consumers had benefited from real reductions in prices for most GTE services, particularly electricity, ports, telecommunications, and air traffic services. He said that, by adopting a more commercial approach to their operation, most GTEs - government trading enterprises - had also been able to provide a dividend return to their governments and the community from increased profits.

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