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ACTION competing with Deane's to provide a similar service? Ms Horodny talked about the Tuggeranong Valley and Brindabella. I live in Conder, which is way down south in Brindabella, and I would be delighted to catch a Deane’s bus from Conder to Queanbeyan. ACTION does not provide a service to Queanbeyan. My family and I sometimes want to go to Queanbeyan to go shopping and we do not want to drive. I would be delighted to be able to catch a bus, and I am sure that Mr Whitecross would be if he had to, as Mr Wood would be.

Mr Wood: Yes, if the bus runs.

MR DE DOMENICO: If the bus ran; that is right. I can tell Ms Horodny that some years ago we were talking about the possibility of Deane's or another private company transferring young people from Tuggeranong to some of the entertainment things that were happening in Queanbeyan. We could not do that because there was not a service available. I can also say that Mr Connolly, who at that time was Minister for Urban Services, was quite happy to look at whether ACTION was prepared to provide that service. As it turned out, ACTION was not in a position to do so; but that sort of thing was explored. It did not need the sanction of this Assembly before we could go out and do that.

There will be times when we will not agree on ideas, but surely it is the right of the executive government to try to improve the lot of anything we get involved with before we have to come to the Assembly every minute of the day to get a decision. As Ms Horodny is aware, sometimes the Assembly is not sitting. Does this mean that before we allow Deane's to compete in providing a service into Tuggeranong we have to wait for three months until the Assembly says, “Yes, you can do it”? I am sure that that is not the intention of her motion.

While I am talking about corporatisation, I think it is about time we put the record straight in as simple language as possible. Some people ask, “Why did he do it?”. Tomorrow I will explain to you that one of the reasons why this Government would like to corporatise ACTEW is that we want to make sure that people get a return on investment. Perhaps I am pre-empting debate on that issue, so I will not continue on the ACTEW side of things.

Let us have a look at the record of corporatisation. It is not something that has happened overnight. Since the early 1980s most Australian governments - Federal, State and Territory - have seen the sense of corporatising government business enterprises, so it is nothing new. Since 1983 we have had a Federal Labor Government. So, we are not talking about right-wing Tories now; we are talking about a Federal Labor Government - right-wing Tory though they might be. Corporatisation began in 1983 with the restructuring of Australian National Railways. Since then, OTC, Australian Airlines, the Office of Defence Production, the AIDC, the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, the Government Aircraft Factories, the Federal Airports Corporation, Aussat, Australia Post and Telecom have all been corporatised or are in the process of being corporatised. The last Federal budget and the one before went a step further - to sell half of the Commonwealth Bank. Now we are going to sell the lot, under a Federal Labor Government. The Federal Labor Government has since gone further and privatised many of the businesses.

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