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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2500 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

to the point of talking to shareholders, or at least one of the shareholders, the head of the Chief Minister's Department, and very lately, in terms of the way that this would be reported to the Assembly.

I have been of a mind that this decision is of such magnitude that the first people who should have known about it should have been the Assembly that made the decision. I have tried to work, and the committee has tried to work, to ensure that this decision was taken, and so that assemblies of the future and people in the future can look back upon the way this project was handled and say that within the framework of the decision of the Assembly this job was done properly. This job was done properly because the committee that I chaired conducted its role as it should. We certainly went out of our way to do so. So I do have to express a little bit of disappointment as to the way it has been served up today.

Mr Berry: But not surprised.

MR QUINLAN: No, unfortunately, I was not surprised. I congratulate all of those officers and people who have been involved in putting this together. It has not been an easy project in the time frame. We can talk about six months and say you should be able to do anything in six months. I happened to lead the project that put ACTEW together in the first place and we did that over a period of six or so months. I can guarantee that those sorts of projects are not simple projects to handle, particularly when you take into account the legal niceties that must be catered for. So the people who have been involved in putting this project together are to be congratulated on the job they have performed within the framework of the decision.

I would also like, in a backhanded way, to congratulate the government for its ability to create the illusion of being capable in the activity of business. What we have ended up with here is a far less than optimal result for the ACT than we should have done. Some time ago, after a heated and extended debate in which this Assembly said don't sell ACTEW, and the public certainly said don't sell ACTEW, we, the Assembly, decided that we would at least go into a joint venture, which is partly selling ACTEW. We did that on the basis that we were informed that there was only one option, and that was one of the options that AGL put forward.

I simply do not accept that. I have not accepted, from the original day, that the first option that AGL put forward, which was a joint venture on retail and did not involve the change of ownership of assets, was closed to us. It just seems to me to be an insult to the intelligence to ask us to accept that a company the size of ACTEW would put forward an option and then, after limited discussions, withdraw it. I simply cannot accept that option two, the option where we did cede ownership of assets to AGL and in return gain some equity in their local assets, was the only option available. It is certainly not the optimum option that was available.

We now will become, as of this particular joint venture, very junior partners of a very large national conglomerate, and a conglomerate that I expect, in exercising its responsibility to its own shareholders, will seek to optimise its benefit from this joint venture. If it does not it is not being responsible to its shareholders. I have held the view,

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