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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (16 May) . . Page.. 1745 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

A further point to note is that the schedule also says, "The principal objectives of the company are of equal importance." I stress that-the objectives are of equal importance: environmental and social considerations are not to be subservient to economic interests. In the last Assembly, the former Liberal government attempted to sell off Actew, but this was defeated by the Labor Party, the Greens and the crossbench. The Liberals did not give up though, and got crossbench support to sell off half of Actew to AGL.

It should be noted, though, that in the legislation that implemented this agreement, the Actew/AGL Partnership Facilitation Act 2000, it is specifically stated in section 7 that the provisions of this act are in addition to, and not in derogation of, the Territory Owned Corporations Act.

The corporate objectives of Actew are not wiped out in its merger with AGL. They still apply to Actew's involvement in ActewAGL. When the former Liberal government proposed the fifty-fifty merger between Actew and AGL, it was unclear to me how the decision-making process within the joint venture would work, particularly if there were disagreements. With an equal ownership structure, and equal representation and voting rights on the ActewAGL board, neither side would find it possible to achieve a majority in the decision-making process of the company.

I was concerned, and I still am, that the interests of Actew will be swamped by the much larger corporate power of AGL, which is the market leader in the Australian gas and electricity supply market, as well as operating in New Zealand and Chile.

Let's not forget that ActewAGL currently supplies all the residential market in the ACT with both electricity and gas, although this may change in future with further deregulation of the energy market. ActewAGL also has monopoly control over the water and sewerage services in the ACT, which are essential community services. It is also probably the biggest company operating in the ACT. The decisions that ActewAGL makes have major implications for energy and water consumers in the ACT-for all of us.

The previous Liberal government did not seem to worry about this, and seemed quite happy to let ActewAGL do what it liked, as they wanted the whole thing privatised anyway. I am surprised, though, that the ALP seems to be following in the footsteps of the Liberals in washing its hands of Actew. I would have thought that the ALP would be more interested in the operations of ActewAGL, given that it wanted to keep Actew under government ownership.

I also thought the ALP would be more interested in the environmental implications of ActewAGL's operations, given the Labor Party's promises to promote sustainability in a range of sectors, and given that energy use is a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions, and the biggest producer in the ACT. We all know that ActewAGL is an odd hybrid of both government and private sector interests, but I was expecting that the ALP would take much more interest in its operations as a way of achieving other policy objectives, rather than just letting ActewAGL become a more commercially driven enterprise.

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