Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (28 October) . . Page.. 2366 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, if you were citing an authoritative source in this place for the proposition that privatisation had caused a supposedly huge or large or significant increase of 11 minutes in outages in Victoria, would you not think you would go back to that same report and see whether it explains what the reason for that particular increase might have been? If Mr Corbell had done so he would see that the increase was due to an entirely natural and explainable reason, not to privatisation but to storm activity in Victoria in September 1996. Do not take my word for it. Rely on the same source that Mr Corbell relies upon, the Regulator-General of Victoria.

This shows very clearly that we have seen the highly selective use of figures to produce a point, a point which was made not only in this place yesterday but also in a letter to the editor of the Canberra Times, which I think was published on Monday or Tuesday of this week, criticising somebody else and quoting again these spurious figures, 207 minutes in 1995 and 218 minutes in 1996. Mr Speaker, the reality is that any fair manipulation of the figures to look at the period before and after privatisation shows one thing absolutely clearly, and that is that privatisation has not meant an increase in outages in Victoria. Quite the contrary. In fact, you can see a reduction in the figures before and after privatisation and it is reasonable to assume that at least some of that reduction was due to privatisation.

Mr Speaker, I ask you now to turn to the first of these three pages - I hope Ms Tucker is listening still even though she is out of the chamber - which I think is the most telling of these arguments. The table on page 1 also comes from the report of the Office of the Regulator-General and is dated July 1998. Members will see the figures which presumably Mr Corbell quoted from. In 1995 outages were 207 minutes on average per customer and in 1996 they were 218 minutes per customer. Mr Speaker, the third column is a column which Mr Corbell did not quote. It shows the outages for 1997, the most recent calendar year, and that figure is 199 minutes - the lowest level of outage in Victoria ever under privatisation. How do you go talking to the people of this Territory and members of this place, telling them that privatisation has been a disaster in Victoria from the point of view of outages, and not mention to them that the most recent figures for the most recent calendar year show the lowest ever level of outages in Victoria?

Mr Corbell only quoted the first two columns. We have to ask ourselves why. Are we expected to believe that Mr Corbell, when he put these figures to the readers of the Canberra Times and to the members of this Assembly, was relying on a report of the Regulator-General which is something like 15 or 16 months old? That he sat down to compile his letter and his comments to the Assembly without checking what would obviously be a more recent report, the July 1998 report? Mr Speaker, I do not think so. I think Mr Corbell quite deliberately chose not to quote the figures for 1997 because he knew it would be a disaster for his own case. He also, of course, chose not to cite any figures before 1995 because they would also be a disaster for his own case.

Mr Speaker, what we have here is a clear, selective use of figures to distort the impression in the Assembly. Mr Corbell may have other evidence in other debates about how privatisation has caused terrible things to happen in other places and he is entitled to put those other arguments in other debates. The question is whether he has

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .