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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 833 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

networks located in other jurisdictions for our electricity. The ACT needs this power station to give it the improved surety of supply that I am sure all consumers want. The last thing we would want is the blackouts which were experienced in Victoria.

The wholesale national electricity market has brought significant new financial benefits and risks to electricity companies and consumers, and we cannot live in isolation from that. Those opposite would like to live in a blinkered dreamland, but the reality is that the way we purchase electricity in the national electricity market has changed for all time. When demand for electricity is rising - and it rises swiftly sometimes - and supply is slow or unable to respond, the wholesale price can rise from the normal level of around $30 per megawatt to as high as $5,000 per megawatt. If you continue to rely on coal-fired generators, they do not have the ability to cope with fluctuations in the market. The technology that AGL proposes to use, natural gas-fired generators, is a fast-start technology that enables them to deploy quite quickly at times of rapid increase in demand.

That means that, with the availability of a local generator using cost-efficient natural gas, they could make a valuable contribution to protect territory consumers from large price hikes in the wholesale market and to ensure that our electricity prices remain some of the most competitive in the nation. Plus it allows them to supply externally into the market and therefore make greater profits for us all. So it allows the partnership to capitalise on opportunities, which is something we cannot do at this stage.

It is quite clear that the world has changed except for those opposite. They are living in the fifties or the sixties. They refuse to acknowledge that we now live in a country which is connected by technology and things like the national electricity market, and we participate in that. We cannot live in isolation from it. The Government has brought the ACTEW/AGL partnership proposal to the Assembly for its endorsement. This proposal is a single package option. It involves both ACTEW's and AGL's retail and distribution businesses. It is up to the Assembly to decide whether it will support ACTEW to remain viable or, as those opposite would have us do, let it slowly dwindle away and continue to lose jobs until ACTEW is no longer viable or until it becomes such a minor player in the scheme of things that its value will dwindle. Some 200 jobs were lost last year. How many will be lost this year? How many next year?

What we have seen over the last couple of months is millions of dollars worth of value of publicly owned utilities whittled away because of changes in the market. Those opposite would condemn ACTEW to remain a part of that when the appropriate thing to do is equip ACTEW with the ability to compete on an even footing. The merger with AGL will allow us to do that. (Extension of time granted) We said that we would protect the asset, and this is one way of doing that. We said in our greenhouse strategy that we would look at ways of reducing the emissions for which the ACT is responsible. This is one way of doing that.

Under this Government we now have the lowest unemployment rate in the country, at 5.3 per cent. That is an achievement we are very proud of. We will continue to create jobs. Despite Mr Corbell's rantings this morning that there were not jobs out there, this Government is in the business of creating jobs. This merger through the call centre and

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