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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (29 October) . . Page.. 2424 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

There is a fundamental question, I think, in relation to this issue. The Chief Minister has linked together the sale of ACTEW and the partial solution of the superannuation funding problem. Logically, of course, those two matters are totally unrelated. It is a very easy solution for the Government to say, "Well, we will flog off ACTEW and it will go a long way towards fixing our superannuation problems". I have to ask this question of the Government: If we did not have this large, unfunded superannuation problem hanging over us like the sword of Damocles, would the Government still be proposing to sell ACTEW? I suspect the answer would be no. There would be no justification for doing it.

There is an argument that says that it has a certain value today and if we do not dash out there and sell it immediately it will have a lower value in the market tomorrow. But that argument has no validity at all if the thing is not on the market. We are told that its value in public hands today is about half its value in private hands. If we do not intend to sell it its public value, no doubt, will remain fairly constant. In five years' time it is probable that its value in public hands will be no different from what it is today. If that is not the case, can the Government please explain to me what the facts are? They have made no attempt to do so. There are some major issues here which the Government seems determined not to put on the table. Yet we are asked, on faith, to accept that we should just flog off a $11/2 billion public asset, built up painstakingly over decades by successive governments using taxpayers' money.

I think there are issues that need to be resolved. I would like to know, for example, what other options the Government has considered. We have seen the consultant's report. It offers a number of options. The Government has not picked up the option that the consultant has recommended, it has picked another one; but it has not really explained to us which of the other options put forward by the consultant have been considered and why it has rejected them. Why is this one the best and only solution? Over and above that, has the Government considered any possibility other than the ones put forward by the consultant? The consultant obviously began from the proposition that this public asset was going to be sold, and all the options put forward by the consultant deal with the sale in one form or another.

I can conceive of solutions that do not entail sale and they may well also go a long way towards addressing this problem which the Chief Minister has associated with it; that is, some resolution of the problem of the unfunded superannuation. I do not believe, on the information that I have available to me at the moment, that selling ACTEW is the only option open that would allow some solution or partial solution to the superannuation problem.

ACTEW has a demonstrated capacity to pay a significant dividend every year. It also has been clearly established, I think, that it has in its possession a very substantial amount of taxpayers' money that it took with it when it was privatised and which should be returned to the taxpayer, regardless of what its future is. If we were to take that money back and establish a sinking fund to partially fund the superannuation, ACTEW, either in its present form or in some restructured form which puts it at arm's length from the Government perhaps and gives it more freedom to operate in the commercial environment, could be required to make a substantial dividend payment every year which could be hypothecated

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