Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2797 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: You were putting some snuff or something up there, Mr Quinlan?

Mr Quinlan: No.

MR HUMPHRIES: All right. My point is that I think we need to be out in the marketplace. It seems to me that if we are going to be out in the marketplace we should have some of the attributes of an operator within the marketplace. Usually government authorities, so-called, do not run around buying insurance and doing other things of a commercial nature in the marketplace. I concede that sometimes they do, but generally speaking they do not. Corporations do. This was simply a way of being able to position this new territory captive insurer in a slightly better position in the marketplace so as to be able to obtain the best deal for the government.

I concede that at the end of the day it does not make any difference really what you call the thing. I am just a little intrigued about the hostility of this place towards matters to do with the private sector. We are talking here about buying and selling, which is an essentially private sector function. Generally governments do not get into the business of buying and selling insurance very much. As a rule they are not into the insurance market in any great way. The private sector is. What is so offensive about the ACT's captive insurance agency being called the ACT Insurance Corporation?

I note that some time ago Mr Berry characterised the government's intention to corporatise some government bodies as being effectively de facto privatisation of those bodies. This is clearly not that. Essentially, the only people who are going to be insured under this arrangement are other government agencies; other arms of government, with a few exceptions to that rule. This is basically going to be about an in-house insurance arrangement which needs to be flexible and operate in the marketplace. However, having said all that, I am not going to labour the point and I accept that Mr Quinlan's amendments will get up.

MR QUINLAN (6:15): First of all, Mr Speaker, I do not accept Mr Humphries' logic. I think he said that we are going to con or flim-flam the market by calling our body a corporation even though it is an authority; that the market will be thick enough to fall for that and deal with us whereas they probably would not do so if we were an authority. If we were talking about insuring houses, I think that artifice would be quite unworthy and would not work.

The only other comment I will make is that this side of the house is not hostile towards the private sector. Certainly this side of the house is quite unwilling to see public assets sold off. We are quite unwilling to see some government bodies, whose primary objective should be providing service to the public, turned into bodies that seek to maximise profit from the public. We recognise that there are gradations in administration, ranging from departments to agencies, statutory authorities, corporations, and then to privatised operations.

This is not a corporation in terms of the territory's Corporations Act. As stated in your own original paper and speech, a statutory authority is being set up. If we are setting up an authority, I think we should use the correct term. I notice that the government has already set down for future debate the ACTION Corporation Bill. In fact, we are setting

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .