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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 674 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
Assembly Secretariat. It may please the Clerk and the staff that the Secretariat would not be a public authority under that definition. There are flaws in this Bill. For that reason, it should not be passed. Other bodies that would not be covered by a performance audit by the Auditor-General include ACTEW Energy, ACTEW Investments and ACTEW China Pty Ltd. Bruce Operations Pty Ltd, for instance, would not be subject to a performance audit, nor would Bruce Property Trust or CIT Solutions. For the executives, the whole of the second floor, there would be no performance audit. Gold Creek Country Club is another. The Nicholls Primary School shared facility would not be open for audit, nor would the University of Canberra or the Workers Compensation Supplementation Fund. There are flaws in the Bill. Rather than going on with it, the Government believes that it should be defeated.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Tucker, did you wish to close the debate?
Ms Tucker: Can I move for an adjournment to a later time this day? I want to deal with those issues, but I do not have time to do that at this point.
MR SPEAKER: You cannot, but somebody else can. Actually, it has been pointed out to me by the Clerk that we could simply suspend the sitting for lunch and the effect would be the same.
Debate interrupted in accordance with standing order 74 and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Treasurer. The ABN AMRO report that the Government relied on in its attempt last year to sell ACTEW recorded a consistent profit trend in the corporations operations. The report referred to ACTEW figures projecting continuing increases in earnings before interest and taxes from $67.9m in 1999 to $73.2m in 2003. These projections were based on the ACTEW Corporation maintaining its current structure and operational base. Can the Treasurer tell the Assembly what profit projections have been made for the joint venture? What are the expected returns for ACTEW from the partnership, and how do they compare with the ABN AMRO projections?
MR HUMPHRIES
: Mr Speaker, it would be quite impossible to predict with any accuracy what profit projections might be obtained by this partnership before the partnership is firmly put in place or even before the details have been negotiated. Obviously, both parties exercise a desire to maximise the profits that the partnership would jointly accrue, and both sides would be looking at ensuring that there was a viable basis for growing the business sufficiently to improve the profit margins, but I have no idea of what they would be. I am certain that there are no jointly determined or jointly
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