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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2505 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, there is no avoiding the fact that this government failed to confront the electors over the disposal-we will leave it at that-of this asset in one form or another. The electors out there, the owners of ACTEW who unreservedly did not want it disposed of, should have had the opportunity to have their say in the matter and to elect a government on the basis of at least part of their philosophy on the future of ACTEW. They never had that opportunity. It was denied to them. I think that was a betrayal that will not be forgotten.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.15): Mr Speaker, I have not had an opportunity to look at any of the papers that have been tabled today, but I share the regret expressed by my colleagues that the government saw fit to pre-empt the committee process that was in place to monitor the proposals to develop the ACTEW/AGL partnership. I think it is a matter of serious regret, something that we shouldn't simply gloss over, that the government did cut across the process that had been put in place. The committee has been working in good faith to monitor the negotiations, and the government has simply treated that process with derision. I think it is a real pity that the government has treated this committee, and through it the Assembly, with this sort of contempt. That is what it is; it is quite contemptuous. This Assembly set up a committee process to monitor the development of the partnership, and the government simply ignored it and in this pre-emptive way announced through the media that the deal was done.

I also want to reinforce the point that my colleague Mr Berry made, although to some extent I do not entirely agree with him when he says that people were not given an opportunity before the last election to bend their minds to what it was that the Liberal party and those who support it would do in relation to maintaining ACTEW public ownership. The point is that Mrs Carnell was asked publicly what her attitude was to the sale of ACTEW, and the people of Canberra were entitled in the election campaign to take note of what her position was, and what her party's position was, in relation to the maintenance of ACTEW in public hands. Mrs Carnell declared her position emphatically in February, the month of the election, that the sale of ACTEW is not on the Liberal Party's agenda. The people of Canberra listened to that and they said, "Oh, the Liberal Party has no intention of interfering with the ownership arrangements applying to ACTEW." That was the statement. So to suggest that the people of Canberra were not told of the views of the Liberal Party before the last election is not entirely true. In fact, they were. It is just that they were deceived. It is just that the truth was not told.

Within a month of the election the Chief Minister announced the scoping studies by ABN AMRO, I think it was, or Fay Richwhite in relation to the sell-off of ACTAB, ACTION, and ACTEW, the trifecta. That was in April 1998. Within two months of the election, and two months of the promise that the ownership arrangements in relation to ACTEW were not on the agenda, six weeks after the election the Chief Minister had announced a scoping study into the possible sale of ACTEW, ACTAB, and ACTION. What amazing deceit. Within six weeks of a promise that the sale of ACTEW was not on the agenda a scoping study was issued.

It was on 8 October, only five or six months later, that the Chief Minister formally announced that ACTEW was to be sold. Do we remember the arguments then, in October 1998, as to why ACTEW had to be sold: that it was uncompetitive in the new competitive electricity market, and that it was a high risk market and would expose the

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