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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 836 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

of its 50 per cent holding in return for not having to pay $100m. That is a possibility which has not been dismissed by the other side. We would argue that it is an inevitability if we enter into this deal.

Mr Smyth's argument about jobs is simply being used for political convenience. As for the environment, there is no commitment on a gas-fired power station. And we are not protecting the asset. In the long term we are handing it over. This deal and the arguments we have just heard from Mr Moore and Mr Smyth are complete nonsense. They deserve to be treated contempt. This is a deal which simply is untenable.

MS TUCKER: I seek leave to conclude the debate on my amendment.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: I will address the arguments put forward by the Minister yesterday regarding the problems of selling off electricity retail but retaining the water, electricity and sewerage businesses. I feel the Minister was clutching at straws in his response. The advice from ACTEW confirms that "there is no doubt that buyers would queue up to purchase ACTEW's retail arm and pay $30m to $60m". However, it seems that the Government has been ignoring this fairly simple and painless way of raising some funds to meet our superannuation liability for some time because of its mind-set that it must sell off the lot of ACTEW. Of course, it failed in this attempt the first time, so now the Government is pursuing this objective in a more roundabout way through the merger with AGL. But I am pretty certain that within a few years we will start hearing calls that the merger is not working effectively and the only way of fixing it is to sell off the whole of ACTEW.

As other members have said, that is clearly what is happening with Telstra, and it is very surprising to me that people think ACTEW would be different. The pressures of the commercial environment will be exactly the same. I found the newspaper fascinating this morning. Telstra is saying that the pressures of the competitive environment mean that they have to further increase their profit and cut jobs. I heard them say on this morning's radio, "We are not a welfare organisation. We have to operate as a business entity in a fiercely competitive environment".

That is the problem that we on this side of the house, excluding Mr Kaine, see. It is the problem that I see and the Labor Party see with this arrangement. It is exposing our essential services to the competitive environment of market forces, which will not necessarily deliver best practice in the field. As I have already said, at stake are our water supply and our sewerage services, both of which have huge public health and environmental health implications, and safe and secure electricity supply.

The Minister asserted that there are complications in deciding what would be divested in selling off electricity retail. For instance, what would we do about the empty floors in ACTEW House? How would ACTEW purchase electricity for its own water and sewerage operations? These are very small complications when compared to the disruption that will be generated within ACTEW by the merger with AGL. It is a very poor excuse.

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