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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 676 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

assumptions about the way in which the advice that has been given to the Government and to the community, in a variety of reports and so on, should be read as indicating the likely future facing us as a community with deregulation of power utilities in the offing.

Mr Stanhope: So you did not do a cost benefit analysis.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is the basis on which I operate. Unless you have access to a crystal ball of some sort, then I am afraid it is the same basis you have to operate on as well, and all of us have to operate on. We have no alternative way of being able to make that assessment. Mr Speaker, I am prepared to read the evidence as it stands before us. Even the Australia Institute was prepared to concede that there are risks to the profit margin of ACTEW if no change occurs.

Ms Carnell: Even Mr Quinlan accepted that.

MR HUMPHRIES: Even Mr Quinlan accepted that as being the case. Now, you have maintained - - -

Mr Quinlan: When are you going to fix that problem?

MR SPEAKER: Order! Stop interjecting, please.

MR HUMPHRIES: We have this projection into the community of Labor's line: "Look, we have to restructure, yes, but all we need to do is just carve off this relatively small employment base part of ACTEW that is the retail arm, put it over into a private sector company" - - -

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, I take a point of order. You set a new agenda last week. You said that answers will have to be concise and confined to the subject matter of the question. The supplementary question is clearly not being addressed by this Minister. You ought to sit him down.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, it is. The question was what are the financial benefits. The financial benefits, as I have indicated, are that there will be, Mr Berry, a security of the maintenance of the business which is ACTEW because it will have the capacity to grow in a way that ACTEW, minus, for example, the electricity retail arm, would not have a prospect of growing. How does a business which is divorced of its electricity retail customers actually grow, Mr Speaker? How does the business grow? It obviously does not. If it does it is with great difficulty. It obviously does not. Mr Speaker, that is the reason why it makes sense to have the whole of the ACTEW Corporation's present business activities at least considered for inclusion in the joint venture which has been placed before the Assembly in the form of a Bill and the motion which is on the agenda for tomorrow. It makes sense to put those in the one basket. If it makes sense not to have them in that basket, of course we should exclude them, and that may be the ultimate result of the negotiations that will be under way seriously if and when the Assembly decides to support that motion and that Bill.

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