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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3578 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

management. You have to ask how this is being managed-but that is another matter. These are issues that would have been canvassed had the matter come to this place for debate before approval being given.

The legislation that I have put forward defines the issues which the government has seized upon in its avoidance of scrutiny-as if we needed to define what "dispose of" meant. We know what it means except when we are trying to avoid the question. The legislation describes it thus:

dispose , of an asset of a Territory owned corporation, includes giving a person other than the corporation an interest in the asset or rights in relation to the asset.

That is pretty straightforward. That is a commonly understood meaning of "dispose", and it is one you would think the government would have thought about when it disposed of this asset secretly. Other definitions in the legislation are:

significant asset , of a Territory owned corporation, includes an asset of the corporation, a part of an asset of the corporation, or an interest in an asset of the corporation, having a market value of at least $ 1 000 000.

and:

subsidiary , in relation to a Territory owned corporation, means a body corporate that under the Corporations Act is a subsidiary of the corporation.

It will now be clear that these provisions, if complied with, will require the government to come back to the Assembly to seek the approval of this place before the sale of assets. This is not something the government wants to do; it is not something the government has ever wanted to do.

This is a government that likes to sell public assets to bolster up its reserves; that is the aim of it. There was an attempt to sell the Health building in Moore Street, in the city, and there have been numerous attempts by this government to sell various assets around this city in the course of its term in office. Nobody will ever forget the claim by the then Chief Minister about Actew: "It's not on the agenda. Not on the agenda." You could have held your breath for the time that promise lasted. Then all of a sudden it was out in the open again. Here is another example of where the government thinks it is okay to unload public assets that have a potential to deliver for the party.

Mr Moore: If you were in government, you would be caught for misleading the house. You would lose your ministry.

MR BERRY: This government is selling an asset of the territory, Mr Moore. You can reconstruct your views of the world to suit whatever colour you want to be on a given day-pink, blue. Whatever colour you want to be, Mr Moore, you can reconstruct yourself to fit the mould. We have seen you do it so many times. We just saw you do it in relation to the parkway, for heaven's sake. Green yesterday, blue today, pinko tomorrow. What a joke you are. We will have less to laugh about when you are gone.

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