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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 595 ..

Can the Treasurer say whether there has been any dramatic change in ACTEW's success in coping with competition in the past eight months? If so, can the Treasurer say whether the ACTEW board has formally resiled from its annual report?

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Stanhope for that question. First of all, I will not comment on what Mr Mackay may have said to the Opposition or to anybody else in correspondence unless I have seen the context in which claims are being made, because it is extremely easy for claims to be made about what was being said without their being substantiated by the context. Secondly, let me say that in my discussions with both the chairman of ACTEW and the CEO of ACTEW, I have had no difference of view whatsoever about the nature of the risk which ACTEW is going to experience in the future. They quite candidly admit that ACTEW has been able to weather quite well the storm which has been brewing for some time and that the advent of contestability for some of their existing customers, while it has resulted in some disappointing losses, has been a process that they have been able to make a reasonable fist of, but it is also worth remembering that during the same period ACTEW has become leaner and meaner as a way of dealing with that new competitive environment.

Ms Carnell: Cutting staff.

MR HUMPHRIES: Principally, as the Chief Minister reminds me, it has been through eliminating staff. There has been a reduction of some 200 staff on ACTEW's books over the last year to 18 months. That is a large number. I recall that the other day the Opposition characterised the comments of the chief executive of ACTEW on this very issue as scaremongering when, in fact, almost exactly what the chief executive had predicted in the event of a failure to sell ACTEW outright had actually come to pass. Do not imagine that ACTEW is just sailing on blithely into the future without dealing with the future. It has taken large steps, but the biggest steps it will need to take will be in response to the introduction of contestability in the domestic electricity market - the sales to you and me and to ordinary householders around the Territory. That is where the real competition will come. ACTEW is very plainly on the record - and there is no division between the chief executive and the chairman of ACTEW on this issue - as saying that without a move to a more competitive basis in the future through an arrangement such as a merger or joint venture with AGL there will be no possibility of guaranteeing the maintenance of job numbers in ACTEW at the moment.

Mr Moore: Two hundred jobs on your shoulders.

MR STANHOPE: Crap, Mr Moore, crap.

MR SPEAKER: Withdraw that, please.

MR STANHOPE: Rubbish, Mr Moore, rubbish.

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