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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 596 ..

MR SPEAKER: Did you withdraw the earlier comment?

MR STANHOPE: I do. I withdraw it.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Do you have a supplementary question?

MR STANHOPE: Yes, Mr Speaker. My supplementary question to the Treasurer is: What competitive load, in the words of Mr Mackay, has ACTEW picked up in the past eight months to offset losses in the ACT?. How many customers does the corporation now have outside the ACT, compared with June 1999?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I cannot give Mr Stanhope details of the new customers they have picked up in the last eight months, but I am happy to take that question on notice if he would like me to do so. I can say that the search for new customers and the acquisition of new customers has come in large part from a very intense process of competition on ACTEW's part, which has meant necessarily, since ACTEW has a relatively small base by comparison with other players in the Australian utilities industry, paring back profits very substantially and in many cases basically earning new customers on the basis of a break-even proposition from ACTEW's point of view; that is, it has taken on new customers without the immediate prospect of making profits of any significance from those new customers - in other words, a break-even proposition. Mr Speaker, at the end of the day, that approach will come at a cost to the ACT community because the dividends which ACTEW pays to the ACT community necessarily will go down if it has too many customers of that kind on its books.

MR QUINLAN: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Treasurer. In a recent paper on the proposed merger between ACTEW and AGL, Dr Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute pointed out that a claim that a new gas-fired electricity station would deliver environmental benefits was possibly or probably ill founded. He points out that the station could well substitute for hydro-generated power, thereby making a negative contribution to the national greenhouse effort. Will the Treasurer at least concede that Dr Hamilton's conclusions exhibit a greater appreciation of the issue than has been put forward by the Government in selling the merger blank cheque proposal?

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Quinlan for that question. First of all, let me say that there are a number of issues in the Australia Institute report which I will have to examine in some detail. I will give it the benefit of the doubt until it is possible to examine the extent to which it has properly addressed the issues which are before the Assembly at the present time.

Mr Speaker, I have to say that it is my view that the community is going to be well served by the establishment of a gas-fired power station in the ACT. Of course, there is not presently a market at work in Australia to provide for the trading of greenhouse credits; but, clearly, that is foreshadowed by the various decisions that the Federal Government and other Australian governments have made in recent days to address the greenhouse problem. It flows out of our commitments under the Kyoto protocols that we should establish such a credit system in the future. My view is that, clearly, the

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