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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 3034 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, this Bill will enable the sale of some assets of ACTEW Corporation and the grant of contractual rights with respect to the assets of ACTEW to be held in public ownership. The Bill will give effect to the Assembly's decision, if it agrees to the motion I have already foreshadowed, and will facilitate any necessary related actions by providing for a scheme whereby the assets and liabilities of ACTEW may be transferred to other parties. The Minister will have the power to make declarations to transfer relevant assets and liabilities. The Minister can declare assets to be public assets which are to be held in public ownership. These assets will be the dams and water and sewerage treatment plants. The water resource will not be declared a public asset because ACTEW does not own this now and it will not form part of any sale or concession of ACTEW's assets.

The Bill provides for the automatic transfer of the staff of ACTEW and its subsidiaries to successor bodies. The accrued entitlements of staff and their terms and conditions of employment are protected under this Bill. The Territory will be able to disclose information for the purposes of the sale and concession. The sale and concession are not to constitute a breach of any contracts to which ACTEW or one of its subsidiaries is a party.

The Bill also provides for the severance of certain assets from land and the vesting of ownership of those assets in ACTEW, compensation on just terms to be paid in the event of an acquisition of property, and the protection of structures of ACTEW that, because of ACTEW's status as a government body, currently may not fully comply with ACT planning and other laws.

Mr Speaker, members of this Assembly now have the opportunity to make the difficult decision that must be made if we are to protect the value of the Territory's most valuable business. This Government is determined not to let the value of ACTEW be diminished. We have gone down this path, not through ideology, but based upon the best information available to us and in the best long-term interests of the Territory.

Mr Speaker, this Bill does not exist in a vacuum. The Government will also table today a Statement of Regulatory Intent which maps out a clear structure to bring the current regulatory environment up to the level required to meet the needs of consumers and utilities as we approach the year 2000. As I will be announcing when I table the statement later this afternoon, the regulatory framework will enshrine in legislation consumer and environmental protections far beyond what exist today.

Mr Speaker, I conclude by quoting a prominent Australian politician who has outlined the principal arguments in favour of this approach far more eloquently than I ever could. That politician argued in favour of selling public assets to, and I quote:

... improve the efficiency of GBEs by exposing them to competition in the markets for their products; reduce the budget deficit and thus the level of public sector debt; and allow the enterprise to raise new equity capital rather than relying on government capital funding.

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