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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 825 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

arrangements? We are not even provided with a guesstimate, let alone any rational assessment of what the dividend may be. How, and on what basis, do you make in this Assembly a decision of this magnitude when you cannot tell us what the anticipated return to the community is going to be? On what basis do you make major decisions of this nature? (Extension of time granted) The debate can be reduced to those fundamental questions. What are the costs to the ACT, not just - - -

Mr Moore: I raise a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. Standing order 62 is specific about tedious repetition, and this is pushing standing order 62 very heavily.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

MR STANHOPE: Having had my flow broken, I foreshadow that I will have to seek a further extension in a minute. I will just repeat what I was saying.

Mr Quinlan: Frivolous points of order are highly disorderly, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope has the call, Mr Quinlan. Are you asking me to sit Mr Stanhope down?

Mr Quinlan: No, this idiot.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, do not interject.

MR STANHOPE: The point I was making is that this is simply a derelict proposal. The Government is asking the Assembly to approve this arrangement, but we do not know what the anticipated dividend will be. No analysis has been carried out of the potential economic or financial costs to the ACT community, of the social advantages and of the mooted benefits in service delivery. There has been no attempt to analyse any of the so-called benefits, and there has been no attempt to provide this Assembly with the costs.

We know almost nothing. We are being asked to support the motion on the basis of a well-run scare campaign - a "we'll all be rooned" approach; the same approach the Government used when it decided to seek to privatise ACTEW 14 months ago. It is the Hanrahan approach to government; namely, "We'll all be rooned if we don't do something". How embarrassing it is that we weren't rooned.

The Treasurer tabled an answer today to a question I asked earlier in the week about the changes in the competitive load of ACTEW. The answer to that particular question is interesting as much as for what it does not include as for what it does include. We discover - surprise, surprise! - that in the period from 30 June 1999 to February 2000 the competitive load has actually increased. We also discover that ACTEW has picked up 34 customers in the same period outside the ACT region. I think the answer of the Treasurer included a response about customers outside the ACT region. This confirms the advice which the chairman of the board, Mr Service, gave in the annual report, which was tabled only five or six months ago. Five or six months ago the chairman of

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