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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2504 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

that before the last election he would not be in here denying his responsibility for the tragic occurrences in his portfolio in respect of the four or five thousand people who are waiting for elective surgery in his hospital system because he would not have got elected on the basis of that, and neither would anybody else. That is why people in this place would not go to the electorate on the ACTEW issue. They wanted to do it in a big hurry between elections so as to ensure it was out of the way before those pesky electors had any say in the matter. That is what this has been about. There has been dishonesty and betrayal around this whole issue from the beginning.

Mr Speaker, I have not had time to sit down and read all of these papers, but one thing I have picked up in the course of the Chief Minister's contribution and some radio announcements this morning is that a huge liability which was shifted to ACTEW to fund our superannuation liability has now been shifted away from ACTEW as a whole and stacked up against the water and sewerage resources. So, in effect, what has happened is that the gearing of ACTEW as a whole, which was seen by some to be quite acceptable, has now been increased on the smaller entity of ACTEW water and sewerage. This is all going to come out in the wash. AGL have done very well out of this. They have got hold of the electricity authority and we have ended up with a debt. That liability has been shifted onto the water and sewerage assets of the territory.

Mr Speaker, these are the issues that will come out in this deal. These are the issues that should have come out before an election so that the electors could decide what they wanted to happen with their major asset. That is the betrayal of the electorate which we have been confronted with. These things cannot go unnoticed, and they won't go unnoticed.

It has been very clear from the outset that this government wanted to get rid of ACTEW in some way. First they tried to sell it and they failed. The community rejected that overwhelmingly. So they decided on another course. Mrs Carnell will be able to put on her CV at some point in the future, "I started the rot." She might not put it that way, but she will be able to say, "I started the rot. I saw the beginning of the end for ACTEW." That is what we are seeing here today, and that is what I fear.

My colleague Mr Quinlan has been chair of a committee looking at this issue, trying to get the best deal for the territory out of an ideological commitment by the Liberals to unload our major asset. Well, it's a bit hard when the numbers are stacked up against you, and it's a bit hard when the government, and the two chief shareholders, have the authority to get rid of it anyway. Their ideological position has been to unload this important asset, come what may.

Mr Speaker, I go back to my earlier points. The major point here is that nobody has had the courage to face the electorate on this issue. Those opposite didn't want those nosy parkers out there who own this asset to have anything to do with it, and they were not game to stand up in front of the electors and say, "We want to sell it, or we want to unload it in some other form." I know that the Liberal political advisers would say, "You are in trouble as a result of your activities over ACTEW. You have to take the issue somewhere and bail out in some way." This partial sale is going to be the tool by which they try to do that. Mark my words; we will see some early benefits manufactured to try to impress upon the community what a good deal this has been.

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