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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (2 February) . . Page.. 62 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

impacts of the proposed privatisation of ACTEW - all those things that the consultant's report had left out and that the Auditor-General referred to, obviously assuming that someone would have done that work.

The Government also wanted to push through the sale decision before the Assembly could consider the regulatory framework that would apply to a privatised electricity and water sector, which meant that the Assembly had no way of knowing whether the regulatory framework would be sufficient to control the operations of a privatised ACTEW. The Government resisted all attempts for an independent assessment of its sale proposal and severely criticised anybody who tried. The Government kept pushing the line that it had worked through all the issues relating to ACTEW's operation and the state of the ACT's finances and had come up with what it thought was the only answer - that the privatisation of ACTEW was essential. Anybody with alternative views was quickly dismissed as being wrong or having ulterior and ideological motives.

The Government also raised the spectre of the ACT's unfunded superannuation liability and said that the only way of funding this liability was to sell ACTEW. Again, it wanted the Assembly to take on faith its calculation on the size of the debt and its claim that there was only one way of funding the liability. I am very thankful that at least we were able to get a select committee to look into the unfunded superannuation liability issue, which gave the Assembly a bit more breathing space to examine critically what the Government was asking us to believe about why ACTEW should be sold. I am also very thankful that the Trades and Labour Council commissioned the Australia Institute to examine the Government's privatisation proposal. I certainly believe, as I have said already today, that it has thrown sufficient doubt on the Government's arguments for the Assembly to question whether the sale of ACTEW was really in the best interests of the ACT. On the other side of the equation, the select committee report into the superannuation liability - again, done in a rush and unable to do a full assessment of all the options - was able to throw sufficient doubt on both the size of the liability and the Government's line that selling ACTEW was the only option for dealing with the liability.

I find it amazing that the Government until now has been so arrogant in dismissing any calls for more examination of this proposal, yet when it looked like it would lose the vote it attempted only last Friday to offer the sweetener to the crossbench that it would commission a further study into the regional economic impacts of the ACTEW sale, something it should have done right at the start. I doubt whether further studies would be able to beef up the Government's arguments, because they are so fatally flawed.

What are the problems with the Government's proposal to sell ACTEW? The Government's argument for selling ACTEW has been quite misleading in that it has not separated the issues relating to the supply of water and electricity. The Government has consistently argued that ACTEW is under increasing competitive pressure from interstate utilities, but that is only for a small proportion of its business. Whilst there is an emerging electricity market in eastern Australia where the price is a driving factor and where ACTEW is competing directly with other electricity suppliers, water provision in the ACT is an environmentally sensitive natural monopoly requiring long-term planning in relation to cycles in weather patterns, conservation of the limited water resources in the region and strict adherence to water quality standards.

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