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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 619 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

guarantee which has been provided by ACTEW is very clear. I want to repeat it in the context of today's debate. The initiatives by AGL, if this proposal is approved, will create 100 new permanent jobs in the ACT and 100 temporary construction jobs. Existing ACTEW employees - about 900, as I have said - will have access to a broader range of career opportunities. Job losses within ACTEW will be contained to no more than 20 redundancies over the following two years. All existing ACTEW employees' entitlements - for example, as manifested in the various awards and enterprise agreements - will be protected.

On the other side of that same coin, ACTEW have made it absolutely clear that they cannot guarantee the retention of job numbers if this process is not approved. In fact, it expects that at least 50 jobs will be lost in the next 12 to 18 months. Remember, no offsetting 200 jobs would be created. ACTEW's chances of growth and prosperity in the medium to long term would be severely diminished.

We should add into the equation which looks at that number of potential jobs gained or lost, depending on the course of action the Assembly decides on today, the fact that in the last year to 18 months there has been serious job shedding on the part of ACTEW. Why has ACTEW shed jobs? ACTEW is extremely sensitive to the question of employment. ACTEW has not shed jobs because it chooses to trim down its work force for the sheer hell of what the balance sheet might look like at the end of the day. That is not the objective. The objective is to make sure that ACTEW is lean and mean enough in its marketplace to offer competitive prices to its customers and to retain as much as possible of its present customer base, to ensure that people who presently buy their electricity or services from ACTEW will continue to do so in the future. ACTEW has achieved some of that efficiency, some of that good performance, that Mr Stanhope referred to in question time today through the shedding of jobs - through the reduction of its overheads, in other words. If contestability in the field of corporate or commercial customers has led to the shedding of 200 jobs in ACTEW, what might contestability in the domestic energy market lead to?

For all the calls for the Government to provide guarantees and assertions about job security in light of the proposal for the ACTEW/AGL joint venture, I note that no guarantees or predictions have been offered by those who believe that we should continue as we are now, or possibly that we should sell the 47 jobs associated with the electricity retail arm. There have been no guarantees or predictions from those who say, "Let us go down the path of only a very limited restructuring of ACTEW".

I put on the table what the Government foresees as a result of the changes it puts to the house today. I have asked the Assembly to accept that the Government will stand behind the guarantees it has made in respect of jobs both within ACTEW and within AGL. I stand behind those guarantees, Mr Speaker. If the Assembly has a better offer of security for the employees of ACTEW, then they should probably take it. But there is not a better offer of security.

We have heard all the huffing and puffing of the Australia Institute and the wild assertions of the Opposition about what will happen if we go down this path, including the claim we heard the other day that Patrick Stevedores is going to come to the ACT in

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