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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 2986 ..

MR QUINLAN: I am just trying to cut off the bulldust that would come out otherwise. I have stood in this place previously and observed that we did not include the control premium, and I do agree that we sold ourselves short-or you have sold us short. Mr Treasurer, I ask whether you agree with Mr Urban's comments-and I will repeat them:

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I can well understand Mr Quinlan's excitement at discovering somebody in the media who agrees with the line he has run. It must have been very galling to have to rely on-I had better get this quote right-the pinko chardonnay socialists of the Canberra Times for that information. Although it must have been very galling to have to fall back on those good souls at the Canberra Times who have been so described by Labor, I am afraid that one swallow does not a summer make.

I have not read Mr Urban's article, although I do tend to read a little more of the Canberra Times then perhaps other on the front bench do. I am just a masochist at heart. That is probably why. My view is that there is inevitably a wide variety of opinions on this issue. However, the fact remains that if you have an asset which is assigned, sold or transferred-whatever language you want to use-to a joint venture partnership with the prerogative for the assignor to have the asset returned to him or it at any stage in the future, then you have an asset which could only be described as being sold in the very broadest possible concept of that word.

This Assembly indicated quite clearly to the ACT government almost two years ago that it would not approve the sale of ACTEW. The government was therefore forced to bring forward a proposal which did not include the sale of ACTEW. Mr Quinlan's oratory was unsuccessful in persuading members of this place that what the government was engaged in was the partial sale of ACTEW and, with the exception of Mr Urban, has been unsuccessful with respect to any commentator in the ACT community, as far as I am aware.

We have here an arrangement which is clearly in the best interests of the ACT community. It puts ACTEW out into a marketplace in a way that retains ultimate government control of the assets, in the sense that they can be called back, but gives ACTEW the opportunity to be able to work with the private sector in a partnership which properly stymies the risk which ACTEW clearly faces without that kind of development. If Mr Quinlan and his colleagues are insistent on continuing the line that there is no risk to ACTEW's assets in a market which is rapidly changing and in an environment where competition is changing and increasing at an enormous pace, then good luck to him.

I think the reaction by the ACT community to the ACTEW/AGL partnership is very significantly different to the reaction of the ACT community to the original proposed sale. We all saw the reaction of the ACT community to the sale proposal. Even on this side of the chamber we are well aware of what people were saying. We are also well aware that that was not the reaction to the ACTEW/AGL deal. That is the best indicator to this government that the proposal we have taken does preserve the necessary degree of public control over the assets, by giving ACTEW the protection that had to be given in the emerging competitive energy market.

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