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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3784 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I think what we are looking at here is a motion that perhaps has a particular intention of stopping privatisation, but we know that Totalcare is established under legislation. If you want to stop privatisation you oppose the legislation. That is how you do it, not by means of these silly motions of Mr Berry's.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is a very clear difference between what Mr Corbell describes as the intention of the motion and what, on the other hand, are the ramifications of this motion. When I heard Mr Corbell speak about his interpretation of "transfer", he implied - maybe I will review the Hansard - that he had no particular objection to the wholesale outsourcing of activities to the private sector, and I cannot believe that to be the case, not from Mr Corbell. I will review the Hansard on that and see if that really is the case. It seems to me, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that this motion simply is intended to stop privatisation, although we do that by legislation.

Secondly, this motion goes well beyond what its original intention was. I will come back to the word "government" which you got so upset about. If there are services of the federal government that Totalcare wins -

Mr Berry: Oh, go away.

MR MOORE: Well, this is what this motion says, Mr Berry. You can see it. If Totalcare wins it first has to have approval of the Assembly, because you have the word "government" in lower case. If you want to move an amendment to make it say "ACT Government", that would resolve one of the small problems associated with this motion.

Mr Berry: How would we resolve the other one and make you happy?

MR MOORE: That would resolve only one of the problems. The thrust of what you are doing is at an inappropriate spot to do it. If you want to do it you do it in legislation. Totalcare is protected from privatisation by legislation, just the same as Actew Corporation was protected. Legislation had to come into this Assembly in order for it to be privatised. This motion is not necessary. It does not achieve anything that you want it to achieve. What is more, it creates a whole series of other problems for an organisation that this Assembly supported legislation saying that it needed to operate like a business.

MS TUCKER (4.58): Mr Berry's motion has raised an interesting issue about Assembly involvement in the transfer of government assets to territory owned corporations. The Assembly already has a significant role in determining the operations of territory owned corporations. Under the TOC Act, the Assembly has the chance to vote on the establishment of a territory owned corporation, as the government would need to amend Schedule 1 of the act to list the new corporation. The Assembly also needs to approve the disposal of a TOC - made undertaking or of a subsidiary of the TOC.

It does seem consistent with these provisions of the TOC Act for the Assembly to be able to give its approval to a transfer of government assets or services to a TOC. However, there does not appear to be any formal requirement in the act for the Assembly to approve the transfer of assets from the government to an already established TOC. Presumably such a transfer would have to be included in the government's budget, but the Assembly has very limited opportunities to change the budget if it does not like the transfer of such assets.

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