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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 643 ..

MR HARGREAVES: "Trust me", says the acolyte from the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years. "Trust me, you can believe me. Don't you worry about that", says Mr Humphries, Sir Humphrey over there. Well, I do not believe him and I do not think I ever will, Mr Speaker.

I want to see some answers to questions. Today he tried to bag the Australia Institute, Mr Speaker. It needs recording. It was not the Labor Party that commissioned the Australia Institute report. Not even in your dreams, Minister, was it the Labor Party. In fact, if I understand it, Mr Rugendyke had, to his credit, a little bit to do with that and I say, "Good on him". He is a man who will go digging in the gold mine looking for the dirt and I think he has probably found it. He has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and I congratulate him for that.

Professor Hodgson asked a lot of questions about that. He said, "What are the total values of the assets?". Mr Humphries does not even know what the assets are. He says, "There are no estimates of the future profits from this venture". I would suggest that there is not one member in this chamber who could tell me a dollar figure for those future profits. There is no estimate - - -

Mr Humphries: Of course not. How could you possibly tell?

MR HARGREAVES: Well, this is the man who wants to sell us this huge pig in this little poke. He says, "Of course there is not", Mr Speaker. What an admission from the financial wizard from the other side of the house - what an incredible admission! That is almost as bad as "I don't know what an asset is". Perhaps you ought to go back to school. I suppose that when you have a lawyer dabbling in financial matters you could expect nothing more.

Mr Speaker, this Minister has not put down a timetable for the equalisation payment anywhere that I can see. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, he has put down some rather interesting contradictions. One is that they are going to put some $100m into the great superannuation problem, and yet we might also put that same $100m into buying a gas-fired generator. But he also said that he is going to lock that payment into superannuation. Now if, for some reason, the deal falls apart, he says, "We can buy it back". But he will not be able to buy it back because he has locked up that $100m. There are huge contradictions in this.

I will give you another contradiction, Mr Speaker. This Minister - and I hope that he hangs his little grey head in shame - has said, "The gas-fired generator will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the ACT". What manifest bunkum that is. For openers, Mr Speaker, we do not have any generation of electricity in this town and therefore we are not making any emissions. The mere fact that you are introducing a fossil fuel-driven generator will add emissions. I do not see how the introduction of something new - another big lump of machinery - is going to have the slightest effect on the current gas emissions.

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