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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 876 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
has listened to this debate or who has taken an interest in it, the Labor Party has opposed the process. We have stated quite clearly what is wrong with the process, and we do not resile at all from any of our views or any of our statements or any of our concerns in that regard.
I will not go over the arguments in any great detail, other than to say that our major concerns go to the complete lack of detail on which to make a responsible decision and the process itself. It was a process which saw the selection of a single company, without any attempt to make it competitive, without any attempt to test the market, and without any attempt to address the real issue which the Chief Minister just averted to - the fact that the future of the retail arm of ACTEW is problematic.
As we have indicated, there are different views about the potential degree of difficulty facing the retail sector. The Government has made no attempt to deal with the identified issue. It has just taken this hatchet to the organisation as a whole. History will tell the extent to which this Assembly today and tonight has been reckless with the ACT's major material asset. History will tell us the extent of the recklessness of this Assembly in disposing of this major asset when we do not have a valuation of the assets to be merged. We do not have a value of the assets being pledged by AGL. There is no estimate of the future profits from the venture.
The Chief Minister has again tried to give some force to predictions of the profitability of ACTEW which fly in the face of the figures that ACTEW provided to ABN AMRO. The figures which the Chief Minister was so intent on relying on just over a year ago, as if her life depended on it, have now been scrapped. ACTEW provided those figures to ABN AMRO, and ABN AMRO reported on them. They are nothing like the projections the Chief Minister has just given. They are a completely different set of projections.
This is the environment in which we are making this decision - in the face of a government which is actually fudging in the Assembly. It is not giving information, and it is decrying information previously given. It has trashed the report which the chairman of the board of ACTEW tabled in the Assembly only a few short months ago - a chairman who tells us in his annual report that the corporation is coping well with competition. That is what Mr Service told us. I think his report was tabled in only September/October. That is how old it is! It was only a few short months ago that the chairman of the corporation boasted how well things were going.
Ms Carnell: But he also went on to say things had to change.
MR STANHOPE: He was expressing justifiable pride at how well the corporation was coping with competition.
Mr Moore: Put it in context, Jon.
MR STANHOPE
: How you can speak about integrity is one of the wonders of this place, Mr Moore. As I went around Canberra talking to constituents, one of the things that struck me was that the fate which befell Billy McMahon at his worst and the fate which befell Pauline Hanson is the fate which I have discovered has befallen Michael Moore. As you meet with your constituencies and go out into the community,
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