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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 858 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

Making news earlier this week were reports of around 600 dairy farmers in New South Wales coming under threat as cheaper milk came in from Victoria. Yet somehow, while the price for milk at the farm gate has gone down and the margin for the home delivery operator has gone down, the price of milk to the consumer has gone up. We are told to accept this as a benefit to the public. I remain somewhat sceptical.

We are yet to see the full impact of the deregulation of water. Members will recall that we were required to pass legislation just under two years ago, under threat of having a portion of our competition payments withdrawn, to establish water allocations which would then be commercially traded. Obviously this concept has a number of environmental and commercial advantages. However, we are obliged, thanks to the Labor Party, to set up a marketplace for water. It was more than a little disconcerting to me that as a parliament we were largely flying blind at the time. The new system is not yet fully operational, but it has already begun to have negative impacts on some types of farming interstate.

Mr Speaker, this brings us to the deregulation of electricity and other energy sources. Once again, thanks to the efforts of the Labor Party in the past, we have been forced to embrace the results of the deregulated electricity market under the guise of there being a clear public benefit. The level of any public benefit is difficult to measure, given the wide number of variables that can occur. How, for example, are the recent decreases in price to the consumer attributable to deregulation or the current surplus of electricity in the market?

One impact of electricity deregulation that is very clear, thanks to the Labor Party, is that we are forced to have a debate like this one today. Since deregulation of electricity was first mooted some years ago, it was obvious there would need to be significant change to the structure and operation of ACTEW as a business. No longer does it have a closed shop, as it were, and protection from interstate competitors.

To date ACTEW has performed well as a business in its new competitive environment, but its future is far less certain. I think this is one point that all members agree on. Doing nothing is not an option. The main factors that I have judged this joint venture proposal on revolve around what is the best for ACTEW as a business and what is the best in regard to ACTEW for the people of Canberra. I think the temptation has been there to assume that these two are not one and the same, and they are clearly not.

This was no better illustrated to me than at the time Paul Baxter, the Independent Pricing Commissioner, brought down his first electricity price determination a couple of years ago. So valuable is the commissioner to the Canberra community now that I could not even conceive of giving this joint venture proposal more than a cursory glance were he not already in place.

I do not believe that the way this joint venture is structured constitutes a sale. The Labor Party has attempted to talk this up as a sale, but it clearly is not, as the assets that ACTEW would take into the two proposed partnerships would be returned should the partnership ever be dissolved. This kind of arrangement is not a sale, and Labor's attempts to scare people into believing it is has done them little credit.

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