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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3580 ..

paying taxes, duties or fees that form part of the public moneys of the territory. Effectively, it tightens the territory-owned corporation regulations, providing accountability and government framework to protect the territory and, for that matter, other shareholders’ interests, where applicable. The opposition will be supporting the legislation.

MS DUNDAS (8.37): The Democrats are happy to support this bill. It addresses a number of issues surrounding the regulation of territory-owned corporations. Currently, there are three territory-owned corporations in the territory: ACTEW, ACTTAB and Totalcare. As we have seen today, the government is preparing to create a new territory-owned corporation for the fleet management business, which I guess will be the remaining part of Totalcare.

Clause 8 of the bill adds new criteria to the main objectives of territory-owned corporations. These include the added objective of social and environmental responsibility to those corporations that did not have those responsibilities before. As the Treasurer noted, ACTEW did have those responsibilities. This move is to be welcomed. For many years the ACT Democrats have argued that the government needed to move more towards addressing the triple bottom line explicitly in its operations, and that includes the operations of territory-owned corporations.

However, while the bill takes a small step towards that goal, it is important that government follow up on this change to legislation by requiring additional reporting by TOCs and other government agencies to track both the social and environmental outcomes produced by the territory. I guess that is something that we will see with the outcome of the budget paper 5 consultations.

The bill also makes a number of changes to the Territory Owned Corporations Act to ensure greater reporting to government about its activities, particularly about any major changes or undertakings by the organisation that may affect its operations or outcomes. There are additional controls on guarantees and investments made by TOCs, creating additional oversight to their financial transactions, which is something the democrats support.

The bill inserts section 17A, which will allow the government to apply general government policies to territory-owned corporations. I have an amendment to this section to ensure that any such application of government policy will be publicly notified to enhance the transparency of the process. I would envisage that that notification would be through a notifiable instrument through the Assembly.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming, and Acting Minister for Planning) (8.39), in reply: I thank members for their support. It is a relatively straightforward bill which standardises governance arrangements within territory-owned corporations.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

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