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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 766 ..
Mr Quinlan: How about get approval for the work?
MR HUMPHRIES: We are asking for approval for the work today, Mr Quinlan, in case you have not noticed. Mr Speaker, we are asking for approval for that work in the certainty that spending that money, both on our part and on AGL's part, will produce a result at the end of the day.
MR CORBELL: My supplementary question is: Does the Treasurer agree that, in the private sector, a situation in which a board of directors signed off and approved a multimillion dollar merger or joint venture without access to vital financial information would rightly earn the rebuke of shareholders and the interest of the security commission?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Corbell draws an analogy between the ACT Assembly and a board of directors. I think there is a better analogy to work with here, and that is between a company board and the Assembly. Say the Assembly is the equivalent of a board of directors, and it needs to have the same right of final approval. I would put it a different way. I would say that the Assembly in this situation stands in the same position as shareholders. The shareholders can and do authorise the board of a particular company to approve a particular merger or joint venture in conceptual terms.
In fact, Mr Speaker, in Australian corporate history, generally it is in-principle approval by shareholders that is given for boards of directors to negotiate those arrangements. In this situation, Mr Speaker, the Government stands as the board of directors, but more particularly the ACTEW board stands as the board of directors, and we seek the approval of shareholders to negotiate the deal. That reflects the practice in corporate Australia.
MS TUCKER: My question is also to the Treasurer and relates to the responses made by ACTEW to Mr Osborne, in response to his questions regarding the impacts of selling just the electricity retail business of ACTEW. ACTEW stated in its response to Mr Osborne that its sewerage business could become redundant within 10 to 20 years because of the potential for domestic customers to recycle sewerage and water on their own property. It was noted that there are already six houses in the ACT that are not connected to the sewerage system. I understand, however, that these houses were actually part of a trial that ACTEW initiated some years ago to test household sewerage treatment systems, and that there are only six houses because ACTEW decided that such systems were not viable in an urban context, particularly with increasing residential densities, and that there was more potential in larger scale but decentralised treatment systems, such as the Cranos system that ACTEW has developed. Minister, could you confirm the status of ACTEW's trial of household sewerage treatment systems, and whether you do still believe that there will be no need for sewerage pipes in the ACT in the next decade or two?
MR HUMPHRIES
: Mr Speaker, it is certainly true that ACTEW has been involved in the process of identifying the potential for there to be an alternative way of handling water and sewerage systems, with respect to individual householders, and it was
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