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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3029 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

the level of commitment by Actew and other shareholders in the role of TransACT at this stage is much less than that, can the Chief Minister tell us whether he has been advised by Actew of the possibility that Actew would be asked to fund some of that shortfall, as evidenced in the current level of commitment and the total cost estimated by the chairman? If so, does he anticipate that Actew will contribute more to the TransACT rollout?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I think it is worth noting that between the first and second iterations of those questions the idea of an investment or rollout became a shortfall. I have not said in my answer to the first question anything in respect of a shortfall, and to the best of my knowledge there is not a shortfall.

TransACT is in the position at the moment of securing commitments or actual dollars in its bank account to cover the cost of the rollout. Not knowing exactly what the cost of the rollout will be until it is completed, I suppose they would not say that they can be 100 per cent certain that they have enough in promises or actual dollars to meet that rollout.

My understanding is that, with the commitments that they have secured or are in the process of securing and expect to secure, there would be no shortfall; that the total cost would be met. That may not be met necessarily by commitments by shareholders entirely. It may be met in a number of ways by things such as vendor finance, or by such things simply as the sale of its services to the ACT community, in which case that brings a return and that pays for the services to be rolled out.

I think it is dangerous to talk about a shortfall as if there is a gap between what TransACT needs to spend and what it has in the bank and to describe it as some kind of gap in its capacity to deliver and therefore some sort of major problem. I think that is not the tenor of what I understand to be TransACT's position. Again I emphasise that this is what we understand are TransACT's arrangements, having indirect interest as a shareholder in Actew and in TransACT.

It is worth recording what an important investment this is to the ACT community by noting the comments of Paul Budde, an independent telecommunications analyst who spoke on ABC radio this morning. He was asked whether he thought the idea of having a broadband cable rolled out around the city was a good one. I quote his response:

It's absolutely fantastic. It is a great win for our society, where we can have lots of new services in ... education, telehealth ... and it's great for the economy because it allows businesses to conduct e-commerce and to extend their businesses overseas ... So it's an absolutely fantastic decision that ACTEW made.

He also went on to say:

And that's why the decision-

the decision by Actew to increase its investment in TransACT-

was so incredibly important, that the shareholders said, okay, we believe in it, we go on, and we fund the organisation properly.

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