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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 835 ..
MR CORBELL (continuing):
Mr Smyth talked about jobs. He has repeatedly attempted to claim that the Labor Party is responsible for the loss of jobs. The redundancies that occurred last year were occurring, as Mr Mackay pointed out at the time, regardless of whether or not the then privatisation proposal was to go ahead. To suggest that because the Labor Party was successful in stopping the privatisation last year those jobs had to go is just an utter fabrication and an attempt to justify a decision to go to a joint venture which the Government knows is fraught with risk and fraught with the real potential of jobs being lost. Before Mr Smyth and others in this place stand up and become all pious about job losses, let us reflect on exactly why those job losses were occurring. They were occurring regardless of any decision taken in this place about privatisation. It is important to put that on the record.
The third point I want to respond to relates to the assets. Mr Smyth talked about protecting our most valuable asset. It is our most valuable built asset. I hasten to add that our most valuable asset is our land, which of course this Government is quite prepared to give away at bargain basement prices. But that is another issue for another day. Our most valuable built asset is ACTEW. We have to ensure that the future of that asset is protected for a considerable period. This Bill does not achieve that.
Mr Moore highlighted this most effectively in his speech when he said that we can always buy back what we bring to the joint venture. If we are buying it back, that means surely that we are selling it. That can be the only conclusion you can reach. This Government has tried to get around the issue of privatisation by saying, "It is a joint venture; it is a partnership". But Mr Moore hit the nail on the head when he said, "We can buy back the assets if the deal goes bad". If you are buying something back, then you are selling it. That is what we are doing. We are selling it.
As the Australia Institute has pointed out, the tendency will be that, as soon as this arrangement is entered into, the senior partner - which will not be ACTEW but will be AGL - will have the whip hand. There is no doubt about that. The pressure will be on for ACTEW to comply with the broader strategy we are buying ourselves into through this deal. The broader implications of being part of a very large company, with national strategic decisions to be made about power and its role in the electricity market and the power generation market, will necessarily mean that either we toe the line or - the threat is there again - we walk away.
When Mr Smyth talks about protecting our assets, he is advocating a deal which will see all our assets lost. He is advocating a deal that in the end will achieve that because no government is going to be prepared to put up the $100m to walk out of this deal. The alleged guarantee that we can take our assets back is a complete nonsense. I have not heard anyone on that side of the chamber advocating that they are prepared to put up the $100m needed to get out of it. Let us dismiss that argument straightaway. It holds no water. Quite clearly, what that means is that we would lose control of our asset.
If there is some problem in the fifty-fifty company, as we are now seeing with the pressures on Telstra to go completely private because of the difficulties of operating in a mixed environment, the only choice left for the ACT will be to give up the remainder
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