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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (2 February) . . Page.. 7 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

this matter. What the Government needs to understand is that the community and members of this place are already suspicious of government arguments and credibility. The fact that we were told privatisation of ACTEW was not on the agenda before the election was a bad start.

It is ironic indeed that the Government, in its press release and its dissenting comments - Mr Hird's dissenting comments, I should say - accuses the committee of no serious analysis of its proposal. It is very worrying that this Government is apparently unable to see how appalling its approach has been. If this Government was committed to allowing serious analysis it would have supported my original proposal to set up a select committee to look at the costs and benefits of selling ACTEW. It would not have shortened the time the select committee on the superannuation liability had to report. It would have included the community much more in the process of the development of a regulatory regime. It would have ensured that development of the regulatory regime occurred before the vote was called.

Only after the Government realised that it did not have the numbers did we see it offer to look at issues such as regional impact and retention value. Suddenly they were prepared to do what most of us thought was fundamental preliminary research. There is still no serious analysis from the Government of environmental implications, of rights of access to information, of community service obligations and regulations.

The basic question that was addressed by the committee was whether or not there were alternatives to the Government's proposal to sell ACTEW to fund the superannuation liability and how the call on future budgets could be smoothed out. The committee has suggested a number of options which would do this. Obviously there are going to be difficulties no matter what strategy is adopted. One can see why the Government found the sale of ACTEW an attractive option. It certainly has some short-term appeal, but long-term dangers in the view of the committee.

Mr Speaker, I will not go into too much detail now regarding the sale of ACTEW as it will be debated next, when we deal with the motion regarding its sale, although I will briefly comment on how interesting it has been to hear the Government passionately speak of intergenerational equity when discussing this matter. How I wish we would see the concept referred to in reference to social and environmental concerns. The whole focus on this particular accruing liability could equally be applied to other areas of policy in the ACT, but it does not happen because these other areas are not easily translated into dollars. They are long-term quality of life issues, but at this point it suits the Government to speak of the price our children will pay because of our inaction today. As it has turned out it appears that most of us are not convinced that this is the case anyway as far as selling ACTEW to pay the super liability goes; that in fact future ACT citizens would not thank us for selling ACTEW.

I must say that in the dissenting comments it was very clear where government priorities lie. For example, in comments on downstream economic impacts, we are told:

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