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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 276 ..

Mr Quinlan: Do you want to read into Hansard the introduction to those expressions of interest?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Quinlan, I understand, has been telling the media today that there is no basis on which the Assembly can consider the merits of other proposals that were offered during that expression of interest process, because the Government has not provided the information. I should remind Mr Quinlan, in case he was on holiday at the time, that on 13 December the Government published a list of the proposals which had been received under that expression of interest process. It included the details of each proposal, the evaluation of each proposal and the nature approximately of the proponent of each proposal, without listing their names. It is pretty rich to be told that there is no information on the table, when that is a very extensive amount of information on the subject. Mr Speaker, I table both that press release and the letter to the Chief Minister which I referred to a moment ago.

I can only repeat that there are a couple of points in that letter. One is that the proposals from the foreign-based organisations were assessed, on all four criteria referred to by ACTEW, as being inferior to the proposal from AGL. The second issue is that there would have been very considerable cost associated with having further work done on a number of different proposals, having them run in tandem. Having had a corporation, joint venture or consortium come to ACTEW or the ACT Government with a proposal of several pages and say, "Here is our proposal. If you want to do further work on it, we will call in consultants and get assessments and valuations done of assets and we will have all these sorts of things done - - -

Mr Quinlan: What is the cost of one on one? What is the cost of having no bargaining power?

MR SPEAKER: Order! If you wish to debate this matter, put something on the notice paper. Do not interject during question time.

MR HUMPHRIES: Each of these proposals was different in nature. Each would have required an extensive amount of money, apart from anything else, to explore further. For that reason, the board, having assessed each of the proposals, decided that the AGL proposal was the best and have put the money that they have for this sort of thing into developing that proposal.

I am not surprised by criticism from the Opposition that says, "You should have assessed them all. You should have actively pursued all of them and you should have employed thousands of consultants to do work on all of them". That is not the approach we have taken. It was not the board's approach either. It was not a sensible approach. For that reason the Government accepted the advice that the ACTEW board's proposal for a joint venture with AGL was the best course.

MR OSBORNE: I ask a supplementary question. Could you let us know at what stage you intend providing us with more detailed information from the two companies in relation to the merger? Is any more information going to be forthcoming before we are forced to make a decision on it?

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