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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1040 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

will not create a little oligopoly of two companies in town, with the risk of prices going through the roof, but we will use some strategic commonsense to preserve the capacity within Totalcare so that when it is reviewed and when it focuses on its renewal it could come back into the business and take over the whole job again."

We have heard in this place that the Totalcare bid was competitive. That is code for the fact that they did not price themselves out of the job at all. We have since heard some rationalisation that it was on the basis of enhanced services. Before this debate closes, I would like to hear from government what those services might be so that we are assured that there will be continuing improved service at a continued economic price.

On the broader front, the loss of functions by Totalcare means that the size of the organisation changes and its capacity to absorb fixed costs changes, so we change the economics of the thing. I wonder whether the government took into account the fact that Totalcare still has a management structure and fixed overheads that have to be absorbed over shrinking business.

I would like to avail myself of the opportunity while I am on my feet today to mention some reservations I have in relation to the Stericorp partnership arrangement that is to be made whereby this particular company will undertake, as best I can describe it, a neutralisation of bugs in hospital and medical waste and some recycling of the product. It is fairly clear from what I have been able to glean-and I have had discussions with the chief executive of Totalcare and a representative of Stericorp-that the success of this business will require a considerable increase in volume. They have projections. Even though the particular process is claimed-I stress that word "claimed"-to be safer and less polluting than the current process, the current incinerator in its upgraded form, the fact that we have to take on significantly more volume in order to make the economics of this Stericorp organisation work and the upgrade that is apparently planned for the incinerator disturb me.

I am concerned for the future of Totalcare. I am concerned to see a business that loses such a clean operation as the housing maintenance, apparently even though it was competitive, and is immediately out of the business at the same time increase its activity in a possibly polluting enterprise within the territory. Within the ambit of Mr Stanhope's motion, I am certainly concerned as to level of service. That service implies service to the ACT community as a whole.

I would like to hear a couple of things from government in this debate if it is possible. What are the additional services we are going to get from these private sector companies that have come into town and replaced Totalcare on its housing maintenance? Secondly, I would like some real assurances that we are not effectively going to increase the amount of pollution in the ACT, whether it be airborne pollution or whether it be the increased requirement for landfill that apparently arises out of the Stericorp operation.

Quite obviously, one agrees with the sentiments of the motion that Mr Stanhope has put forward. I comment again on what Mrs Burke said about outsourcing. Conventional wisdom is changing as we speak. Anyone who wants to borrow a book, I have a little book here called The Death of Economics, written by Paul Ormerod, who predicted quite some time ago that we would arrive at the day we have arrived at today where we are

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