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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 847 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, here we are at the core of the debate. Everybody in this place, including Mr Rugendyke and I, are concerned that at the end of the day the arrangements that are entered into guarantee certain existing rights. We want to retain the rights of the ACT community to the assets that are inherent in ACTEW and that have been bought and paid for by the taxpayers. We want to ensure that the rights of the employees of ACTEW are perpetuated. We want to ensure that the entitlement to the delivery of services by this new organisation shall not be at a lower standard than what people are already entitled to. That, I believe, is the nub of the Opposition's opposition to this proposal. I and Mr Rugendyke and other members of this place are no less concerned than the Opposition that we retain these rights that currently exist. The question is how to achieve them.

Mr Quinlan's amendment to Mr Humphries' motion would place we 17 people as a black eminence, not a grey one, all 17 of us, in the board rooms of AGL and ACTEW when they are discussing these matters of business. That is not the place of the 17 members of this Assembly. I for one do not wish to be there. I am sure the Labor Party is adopting this hard-nosed approach because they see it somehow as a way of stopping the process somewhere along the road, and I do not support that either.

I think the process should go ahead and the parties should be allowed to negotiate an outcome, with ACTEW negotiating on behalf of the residents, the shareholders, if you like, of ACTEW. By the shareholders, I don't just mean the Chief Minister and her deputy who sit there as voting shareholders on ACTEW. When I use the word "shareholders" I mean 300,000-odd Canberrans, all of whom have contributed to the asset that exists in ACTEW.

I do not believe that we should be in the board rooms and participating in the very detailed debates that are going to have to take place to arrive at a satisfactory heads of agreement or a satisfactory partnership agreement. Certainly, when you get down to the operating contracts, who are we to involve ourselves in that process? I would say we are not competent to be there, even if we wanted to be.

So, if Mr Quinlan's proposal is not the way to go, how do we go? Well, I had to ask the question, "What is the role of this legislature?". It is not to get into the board rooms. It is not to get into the detailed discussion of how these things evolve. It is to monitor that and at the end of the day ensure that what the negotiations deliver complies with the principles that we set. I think we are pretty clear on what the principles are. They are that the interests of this community have to be preserved. You can define that in any way you want. I will be happy to have the Leader of the Opposition or Mr Quinlan spell out what they think those principles ought to be, and we can build them into the process.

What I am suggesting as an alternative is that the Assembly adopt its legitimate position of being a monitor of what is going on. Now, how do we do that? Well, Mr Speaker, I have made it clear, long before today, that I have not been sitting in my office twiddling my thumbs. I have been talking to a lot of people, trying to get the desirable outcome from this process. I have spoken to the chief executive officer of ACTEW on a number of occasions, and I have spoken to the manager of business development for AGL on a number of occasions. I have put to them what I have seen my objective as

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