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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 636 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

a community. We know that we want to guarantee best practice management and flexible ecologically appropriate technology transfer and development. We want to guarantee equitable delivery of essential services now and for future residents of Canberra". We are supporting the Government in looking at alternative ways of managing risk in retailing, but we are saying no to this unfounded major transfer of our assets. Mr Kaine said that we need to look at this proposal with a good heart and a good intent. I am sorry, that is not enough.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.03): The motion before the Assembly today is, in my view, nothing more than a very crude attempt by the Government to rewrite history. We have had this debate. We had this debate just over 12 months ago when we rejected the Government's driven and flawed first attempt to sell this community's largest and most valuable asset. Yet today we are being been asked to debate much the same thing in much the same climate. Make no mistake, the Government is just as driven today as it was 12 months ago and this proposal is just as flawed. What has changed, and it is a significant change, is the Government's tactics.

Last year the Government tried to snow the Assembly with a barrage of reports from highly-paid consultants - reports, of course, that supported the Government's contention that the only possible solution to the Territory's unfunded superannuation liability problem was to sell ACTEW. The Government's problem then was that it relied on flawed consultants' reports and flawed assumptions. This time the Government has learnt a little. This time there are no expensive consultants' reports. In fact, this time there has been very little information at all. There is a vacuum. The Assembly is being asked to decide the future of the community's largest asset with all the significant questions left hanging. The process might be different from the one last time, but it certainly is just as flawed.

What do we have before us today? We have a Bill - the ACTEW/AGL Partnership Facilitation Bill - and we have the Government's motion. We need to understand what the Government intends to do, and it is quite clear and it is quite simple. If we pass the motion before us, we have agreed to the vesting of the main undertakings of ACTEW's electricity arm in a joint venture between ACTEW and AGL. If we pass the Bill, and we are not debating it at the moment, we give the Government the mechanism to process the vesting of ACTEW's electricity assets in the joint venture. But it is the motion that we have before us today, and those are the implications.

It is perhaps instructive to look at what we have not got before us. There is no definition of the problem, which is the risk from competition to a relatively small part of ACTEW's business. There is no assessment of where the risk will fall and the consequences of it, and there is no proposed strategy to deal with those consequences. Surely it is not unreasonable for the Assembly to expect to have these issues before it. Surely it is not unreasonable for the Assembly to expect the Government to offer a logically constructed argument in favour of its proposition. We should not forget that we are dealing with the future of the community's single largest asset. Canberrans own ACTEW. We have to be absolutely certain that decisions we make on the corporation's future are well grounded and protect the interests of its owners, the Canberra community, the public.

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