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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2501 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

and certainly this side of the house has had the view, that, given that we are talking about essential services in the community, there are more considerations than optimising benefit to the owners. Rather, there is a level of service to be provided.

We accepted in this place right from the outset that ACTEW did face some risks, but the government has persisted in putting a price tag on ameliorating that risk. The price tag has been: "We have to sell something." We now are receiving the princely sum of $119 million or $160 million, depending on how the calculation pans out. We do not know at this point because we have bought ourselves a half share in the gas business and we do not know exactly how it stands in relation to price regulation, and we do not know what the impact of the advent of Bass gas from down south is going to have on that business. But we are in there and we have a slice of it.

Mrs Carnell, in presenting this proposal to this house, has made claims that we wanted to make our business to allow ACTEW to grow. Again, that is a nonsense. The ACTEW of the future will be working, as I said, as a very junior partner of the national firm AGL. It will have a one-to-one contractual relationship for the purchase of energy, of both types, through AGL. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that we are going to go out and compete against AGL and others, knowing that competition in selling is about buying and selling. So we are going to compete with someone who is selling us the product in the first place. It would seem to me to be an absolute nonsense.

If we attempt to go out and get into the mass retail market for energy across Australia we will be returning to the risk situation that this government has claimed that it is trying to avoid. So there is a contradiction in that process. ACTEW may be able to compete outside the borders of the ACT in very small sectors. The report we have been putting together referred to a boutique competitor which might specialise in supplying to disaggregated businesses like McDonald's or a couple of the things they compete for already. As for becoming a major player or enjoying major growth, the prospect of that is highly unlikely.

We have to recognise also that this joint venture will be subject to competition within the boundaries of the ACT, and I doubt very much whether we will see massive growth. I think it is misleading to claim that that is a major potential advantage of this particular exercise, because it is simply not.

Mr Humphries: What would you have done? What is your latest solution?

MR QUINLAN: Mr Humphries interjects and asks what would I have done. Mr Humphries, I would have accepted AGL's option one. I would have gone into no more than a joint venture on the retail side. I would have maintained, like this Assembly wanted, the ownership of those public assets, the electricity supply system, in public hands. It is a natural monopoly. It is not subject to competition. It has not been subjected to risk. I would have ensured that we retained ownership. If I was going to sell it, if I was going to put it on the market, I would not allow myself to be drawn into a joint project now which means that should I want to sell it at a later date I am never going to get the optimal price for it. This joint venture makes it highly likely that there will be-

Mr Humphries: Write that down, Wayne. Sell it at a later date.

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