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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2035 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

looks like it is going to and negotiations are going well-there will be a board in place and that entity should be the entity determining what the appropriate financial structure of the joint venture looks like.

I do not believe that members of this Assembly, from either the government or the opposition, have the expertise in energy trading, whether it be gas or electricity, to determine what the internal structure debt requirements or whatever are for this entity. The approach that both Mr Humphries and I have taken is to say that, really, this is a matter for the board. No position has been put by the government to the committee or to anybody else on what the gearing of the new entity would look like.

Mr Quinlan: I think this is a bit disingenuous. Come on. You are talking of hundreds of millions of dollars of territory assets.

MS CARNELL: Mr Quinlan makes the point that a large amount of ACT government assets are involved. We totally agree, which is the reason it must be managed very efficiently and appropriately for the industry. If the board determines to structure at a particular level and if that did mean some repayment back to the ACT government-Mr Humphries has made that point in the past, I think-the approach would be to pay off debt or to put it into superannuation or some other form of equity for the ACT taxpayers. So the reality is that equity is maintained. It is not as if you lose it. The equity is either in one barrel, shall we say, or as capital in another. The ACT taxpayer does not lose either way. In fact, the ACT taxpayer, as a result of the joint venture, we believe, is significantly better placed.

Again I thank the committee for the work they have done up until now. I join with Mr Quinlan in congratulating all the people from ACTEW and AGL who have been involved in the negotiations. There is an extraordinary amount of goodwill in this whole approach. We certainly hope that there will be final documentation before the Assembly meets again.

MR KAINE (5.06): Mr Speaker, I had not intended to speak on this subject as I thought that the chair of the committee stated the situation in full. I must say that I am a little concerned that the Chief Minister has decided not to table the status report and the interim report of the probity auditor. The committee met with the chief executive officer of ACTEW and with the probity auditor as recently as about three or four days ago and at that last meeting it was agreed that those two documents would be tabled because one is a comprehensive statement of where the proceedings are at the moment and the other is a statement by the probity auditor that at this stage he sees no difficulty.

The interesting thing is that the probity auditor did not disagree that these documents should be tabled, and that they should be tabled by the government. Now the Chief Minister tells us that the probity auditor recommends otherwise. I find that change in just a matter of days rather interesting. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that both of those documents are in the hands of the committee and there is nothing to prevent the committee tabling them, but we felt that it was more appropriate for the government and the probity auditor to report to this place on those matters than for the committee to do so.

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