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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 3137 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

ever make. For that reason it is vital that there be a chance to offset against this decision some of the major ramifications in financial terms that flow from it. For that reason I support the amendments which have been put forward by Mr Osborne to ensure that the Assembly focuses on the biggest issue of all, and that is the issue of the Territory's unfunded superannuation liability. Mr Speaker, we have heard a lot of nonsense, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of sheer, unadulterated claptrap in the course of the debate about ACTEW so far.

Mr Moore: Some simple mistakes, too.

MR HUMPHRIES: We have heard some simple mistakes as well, and that has not helped matters at all. We have heard assertions about how the privatisation of power results in lower levels of reliability for our utilities. That is not borne out by what has happened in other States, mind you, but assertions to that effect have been made. We have heard suggestions that prices will go up - also not borne out by what happens elsewhere. We have heard assertions about loss of quality of service. People have conveniently overlooked some of the disasters that have happened to publicly-owned utilities elsewhere.

Mr Speaker, I think, if we have a debate about those issues in this committee, we will not so much end up with an attempt to find consensus on key issues, which should be the focus and which generally is the focus of the work of most of our committees in this place, but rather we will find a select committee being used simply as a forum whereby the two sides of this debate can slang it out and dredge up ammunition for an all-out brawl, using misinformation against misinformation and all sorts of distortions and propaganda basically to advance the side that that particular cause comes from.

That is not going to be helping anybody in the community make a decision. It will not help this Assembly make a decision. But there is a fundamental issue about which it is not possible to be particularly political, in the sense of projecting a partisan and distorted picture of the issues, and that is superannuation. Either there are alternatives - viable alternatives, reasonable alternatives - to what is before the Assembly at the moment or there are not. This committee gives us the chance to test the issue which has been put before the Assembly by the Government, the proposition that we have asserted, which is that we have a need to sell ACTEW for reasons to do with competition in the Australian electricity and water marketplace, and the other proposition, which is that such a sale would meet a huge unfunded liability facing the ACT community over the next 20 or 30 years, which is the unfunded superannuation.

Mr Speaker, as a member of a government which has put forward that proposition, I welcome the chance for a committee to test that issue of unfunded superannuation. It is a pivotal issue. It is an enormously important issue. It is an issue where, indeed, members who have opposed each other on this issue can go toe to toe. We can have a slug-out in that forum on issues to do with process perhaps and the necessity for it and other things like that. But the fundamental question - whether there is an unfunded liability and whether there are other alternatives to addressing it - is an issue that the committee cannot escape and must address. I think, Mr Speaker, a forum like this would be very useful in addressing it.

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