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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 627 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Okay, how then can we make it better? Some of us have ideas about that. I know that Mr Quinlan has. But I think that by debating this issue first we have put the cart before the horse, for the reasons that I expressed earlier. I do not want to give the Minister the authority to flog off the assets of ACTEW without the enabling legislation for a particular form of merger to go ahead. I think that the two are complementary. The Minister is quite right, of course; he has to come and ask for the approval of this place even after the Bill is enacted into law. Even though clause 11 says that the Minister may do certain things, he cannot do so in connection with the assets of ACTEW without coming back to us and asking for our permission to do so. So he does need that permission.

It would have been better to have dealt concurrently with the Bill or perhaps to have voted on it after we had voted on the Bill and put the Bill in place and then said, "Okay, Minister, we have given you the enabling legislation. Here is the last piece of authority that you require, that is, to transfer certain assets". But we have gone about the thing back to front. So, to allow us to vote on this motion before we deal with the legislation, I foreshadow an amendment which adds to the end of the words that Mr Humphries has proposed the words "subject to the passing by the Assembly of the ACTEW/AGL Partnership Facilitation Bill 2000".

The effect of that would be that the Minister would have the approval to transfer these assets provided that the enabling legislation is in place, and the enabling legislation would be more specific about the arrangements by which that might be done. I support in principle what the Government is doing. I think it is sensible. I do not think that we will have anywhere to go if we kill off this one, and I do not want to see in 10 years' time that ACTEW has withered away and died, that the asset inherent in it has been lost. I want it still to be there and I want it to be enhanced, if that is possible. I see this proposal as a way of doing it. I will leave it at that for the time being, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will move an amendment to Mr Humphries' motion in due time.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (4.31): Mr Quinlan mentioned in passing electricity retailing . I want to concentrate on that. The ACTEW/AGL partnership would put ACTEW's electricity retailing business in a much stronger position to grow and prosper in an environment where we have seen massive changes in recent years, and further major changes are foreshadowed for the future. That is something that we cannot get away from.

One important issue is how moves to allow for more competition in electricity retailing - in other words, to give smaller customers the opportunity to choose their own retailer, a choice enjoyed at present by larger customers - would be served by the partnership proposed. The best answer is that, despite the complexity of the issue and the major uncertainties that remain about how this further reform would be implemented in Australia, the partnership would provide a framework on which ACTEW's electricity retailing business could grow and prosper.

It is important to consider this question in the context of the massive change in the operations of electricity companies over the last decade, especially over the last five years. The business environment for electricity retailers has changed fundamentally over

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