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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 645 ..

MR BERRY (5.37): Mr Speaker, the Government will not agree to put this matter off and they will, of course, oppose the motion to delay it so that full disclosure is avoided, because the more information that comes out about this deal, the more trouble they get into. I think the Minister has more or less admitted that. They have learnt from past mistakes. Never give this lot full information, otherwise they might work out what is going on; that has been the attitude of the Government. Clearly the Treasurer, in this case, is playing the same game as his predecessor, Mrs Carnell - making sure that there is little information to go on so that they do not have to answer the criticisms.

If you have a look at the information that has been provided to the chamber today, what is most striking about it is that it demonstrates and catalogues the information that is not available, and why we need to see it. There may well be a need for those who, at this point, support the merger or the sale - however you describe it - to prevent a long and tedious debate, as they could well be proven wrong in their assessment of the issue, and be exposed.

I know when talking to the dozens and dozens of people to whom I talk in my electorate, from all levels of society, that they are concerned about this, and they are mostly concerned about this because they have experience with this Government. They know that Kate Carnell will be involved in this; they know that she announced it and gave it her imprimatur in the first place. They would not know the detail of the Territory Owned Corporations Act, which required her signature for this matter to reach this point, and will require her further signature for the matter to go further, along with that of Mr Humphries. What probably many would not know is that the Cabinet endorsement of this proposal would also have included the Chief Minister. Those of us who know this place also know that the Chief Minister has most of the say in these matters, as she would have had up to this point.

Mr Speaker, we also know that - notwithstanding the Chief Minister's comments - there can and will be negotiations between the voting shareholders and the board, and we will never find out what they were about. Unless there is a disagreement and a direction from the voting shareholders, it never finds its way here. So you can bet that there are going to be discussions and negotiations between the voting shareholders before they sign away a deal. There may even be written matters that never find their way into this place unless there is a disagreement.

When it comes to this place, what happens when there is a disagreement is as set out in the Territory Owned Corporations Act. So, if there is a disagreement, and the voting shareholders issue a direction to the board of ACTEW, that is when we find out about it, because it has to come back to this place. I heard Mr Rugendyke this morning on public radio saying, "Oh, I do not want the Chief Minister's fingerprints on this". Sorry then, Dave, this deal fails, because she has them on it already and she will have another set on it before long. You will have two sets.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry, you must not debate that motion.

Mr Humphries: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a debate about the substance of the matter, not about the motion to adjourn the debate.

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